ETA Members Highlight Valentine’s Day Spending Stats
2-13-2018
Love is in the air. Or is it data?
ETA members Mastercard and First Data this week released the latest in Valentine’s Day spending data as American consumers prepare for the country’s preeminent romantic holiday.
According to Mastercard’s 2018 Love Index, an analysis of credit, debit and prepaid card transactions during the Valentine’s Day period over the last three years, Valentine’s week sees a 17 percent increase in travel transactions and hotel stays. Experiences rule the day, Mastercard’s data suggests, with 69 percent share of spending on dining out and 21 percent spent on air and train travel.
First Data’s SpendTrend Valentine’s Day Report, an analysis of card-based forms of payments, found that less than 10 percent of Valentine’s Day spending is on flowers – the majority of spending comes from jewelry stores and other luxury items. And not all major American metropolitan centers spend equally, First Data’s report suggest. Where LA, New York and San Francisco spend the most on luxury brands, Philadelphia romancers take a different approach: alcohol tops Valentine’s Day retail categories for the city of brotherly love.
Procrastination apparently isn’t a common strategy for Americans either, the Mastercard Love Index finds, with the majority of gift purchases happening on February 11th. The day itself, First Data’s numbers show, is a different story, with florists peaking at 11:00 am, card stores peaking over the lunch hour, jewelry stores peaking at 2:00 pm and beer, wine and liquor stores peaking at 5:00 pm.
Despite the holiday’s long-standing history, the data also suggests that Valentine’s Day is a driver for next-gen payments. According to Mastercard, Valentine’s Day spending sees a 30 percent increase in the number of e-commerce transactions and a 166 percent increase in the value of contactless transactions.
Click here to see the First Data SpendTrend infographic on Valentine’s Day spending, and click here to see Mastercard’s 2018 Love Index infographic.
About ETA
The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) is the world’s leading advocacy and trade association for the payments industry. Our members span the breadth of significant payments and fintech companies, from the largest incumbent players to the emerging disruptors in the U.S. and in more than a dozen countries around the world. ETA members make commerce possible by processing approximately $56.75 trillion annually in purchases and P2P payments worldwide and deploying payments innovation to merchants and consumers.
ETAs membership spans the breadth of the payments industry to include independent sales organizations (ISOs), payments networks, financial institutions, transaction processors, mobile payments products and services, payments technologies, and software providers (ISV) and hardware suppliers. For more information, visit electran.org.
Related Posts
News
INFOGRAPHIC: Tracking the Evolution of Loyalty Solutions
Loyalty programs cultivate lifelong customers. And they’ve come a long way since the days of punch cards. Modern loyalty solutions integrated mobile payments, rewards and ecommerce technology to get customers to keep coming back. For . . .
5-20-2021
learn more
News
ETA CEO Jodie Kelley: Reflections on the Past Year and Looking Ahead to the Future
By Jodie L. Kelley, CEO, ETA. As I complete my first year as CEO of ETA, I am struck by what an extraordinary year it was in so many ways. As we entered 2020, I . . .
9-28-2020
learn more
News
TSG INFOGRAPHIC: Assessing the Value of Payments Technology
Accepting digital payments costs merchants money, but the “juice is worth the squeeze,” argues payments research firm The Strawhecker Group in their latest infographic. The infographic highlights data that demonstrates the immense value merchants and . . .
7-23-2020
learn more