Laser card spending hits €420m - before Christmas

CONSUMERS clocked up €420 million of Laser card transactions between late November and early December, as usage soared by a whopping 36% before the serious Christmas shopping even began.

A similar increase is expected in the use of credit cards, the Irish Payment Services Organisation (IPSO) said yesterday. But Ireland is still some distance from being a cashless society, the organisation added.

In Britain, officials said on December 29 that credit and debit card spending had overtaken cash spending for the first time.

British shoppers are expected to have spent a total of £269 billion in 2004 using cards, compared with £268bn in cash.

But IPSO, the umbrella body for payment services for Irish financial institutions, said such a scenario was not likely to occur here soon.

“Unfortunately not,” said spokeswoman Úna Dillon. “That is our aim as an industry. It’s a lot less expensive for everybody overall, including customers, to use cards over paper and cash. The actual processing of the cash, especially for retailers, is quite expensive.”

The fact that a substantial amount of Irish people do not actually have a bank account, however, is a major obstacle, as Laser cards work by debiting a person’s account for the appropriate amount when they make a purchase.

“That is something that we’re hoping to change,” Ms Dillon said. “But certainly at this stage, we’re not seeing the same kind of levels of card usage as Britain.”

Nonetheless, usage is increasing, as evidenced by the unprecedented growth in Laser transactions recorded from late November to early December.

The €420m of transactions represented a 36% increase on the same period last year.

Figures have not yet been collated for Laser spending over Christmas and the New Year, nor for credit card usage in the same period, but IPSO expects to see significant increases in both.

Retailers are reporting strong sales over the festive season, with Brown Thomas on Dublin’s Grafton Street, the country’s most prestigious shopping thoroughfare, recording double-digit growth.

Overall, consumer spending was up 10% this Christmas on 2003, according to the Small Firms Association, which estimates that over €5.5bn was spent over the period, New Year sales included.

This figure excludes spending by the corporate sector, which will have accounted for several billion euro more being rung up at the tills.

But the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland (CCI) were less positive yesterday about festive season results.

It is predicting an increase in retail sales of circa 3%.

“To borrow a phrase, I think it was a good Christmas, but not a great one,” CCI chief executive John Dunne told RTÉ Radio.