The electronic card transactions (ECT) series cover debit, credit, and charge card transactions with New Zealand-based merchants. The series can be used to indicate changes in consumer spending and economic activity.
Key facts
All figures are seasonally adjusted unless otherwise specified.
Values are at the national level and are not adjusted for price changes.
May 2025 month
Changes in the value of electronic card transactions for the May 2025 month (compared with April 2025) were:
- spending in the retail industries decreased 0.2 percent ($9.9 million)
- spending in the core retail industries decreased 0.2 percent ($11 million).
By retail spending category, movements were:
- fuel, down $12 million (2.4 percent)
- durables, down $8.1 million (0.5 percent)
- consumables, down $1.6 million (0.1 percent)
- apparel, up $0.2 million (0.1 percent)
- hospitality, up $1.7 million (0.1 percent)
- motor vehicles (excluding fuel), up $5.0 million (2.6 percent).
Note, the seasonally adjusted series are adjusted independently of each other, therefore, the sum of the component categories may differ to the total.
The non-retail (excluding services) category increased by $34 million (1.5 percent) from April 2025. This category includes medical and other health care, travel and tour arrangement, postal and courier delivery, and other non-retail industries.
The services category was down $0.7 million (0.2 percent). This category includes repair and maintenance, and personal care, funeral, and other personal services.
The total value of electronic card spending, including the two non-retail categories (services and other non-retail), increased from April 2025, up $31 million (0.3 percent).
In actual terms, cardholders made 166 million transactions across all industries in May 2025, with an average value of $54 per transaction. The total amount spent using electronic cards was $9.0 billion.
Data quality
There was a change in the industry classifications for some of the ECT data provided to Stats NZ in the beginning of the June 2024 month. Since then, some data have been imputed to maintain consistency in the industry-level time series. Stats NZ have worked through how best to integrate these classification updates into the published ECT series. This change is planned to be introduced in the June 2025 data release on 14 July 2025.
More data
Use Infoshare to access the electronic card transactions time series:
Subject category: Economic indicators
Group: Electronic card transactions (ANZSIC06) - ECT
Definitions and metadata
Electronic card transactions data collection methodology - DataInfo+ gives general methodology used to produce electronic card transaction statistics.
Electronic card transactions concepts - DataInfo+ gives definitions of terms used in this release.
Technical enquiries
Yvonne Fakahau
[email protected]
04 931 4600
ISSN 1178-0258
Next release
Electronic card transactions: June 2025 will be released on 14 July 2025.
