Thursday 7th February 2008
Figures from UK payments association Apacs have revealed a slower-than-usual rate of growth in Christmas expenditure in 2007.
In all, purchases made using plastic cards grew in value by four per cent - less than half the 8.8 per cent detected in 2005-06.
Within the data, a trend towards spending existing funds, rather than borrowing on credit, was observed.
This resulted in a slight drop in credit card expenditure, from £11.4 billion in 2006 to £11.3 billion in 2007.
Spending using debit cards, meanwhile, grew by £1.3 billion to £20.9 billion, an increase of 6.8 per cent.
Director of communications at Apacs Sandra Quinn commented: "Despite talk of a slowdown once again we spent record amounts last Christmas.
"But it appears that the rapid pace of growth in our festive spending is starting to slow."
Apacs published its Paying Safely Online guide as a free download in the run-up to Christmas in order to help tackle the levels of fraudulent purchases which were expected to be made.
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