Australian Credit Card Statistics: Payment Transactions Volume & Value

Credit card statistics tell you the truth about spending in Australia. It is easy to look at the number of transactions and the value of those transactions to see how much more people are spending then they had in the last ten to fifteen years. It may also explain the debt problem that far too many people face.

Australian credit card statistics are staggering. When you take a hard look at the amount of money we spend on our ATM Withdrawals, EFTPOS, and credit card transactions it is not hard to see why debt is such a big problem. If you look at the numbers over the past ten years you see that both the monthly volume of transactions and the value of transactions has truly skyrocketed. There does appear to be a slight pull back in the amount that Australians are spending, but the numbers are still significant.

• In 1999 there were 36.6 million ATM transactions per month.
• In 2009 that number jumped to 70.8 million ATM transactions per month.
• In 1999 there were 44.4 million EFTPOS (electronic funds transfer at point of sale) transactions per month.
• In 2009 this number also jumped to 165 million EFTPOS transactions per month.
• In 1999 there were 42.8 million credit card transactions per month.
• In 2009 there were 118.8 million credit card transactions each month.
• Credit card statistics say there was a drop in credit card transactions from 119 million per month in 2008 to 118.8 million in 2009.

What is interesting to look at in credit card statistics is not only the last ten years but to go further and look at the last fifteen. Credit card spending in 1994 was only valued at 1.8 billion dollars. If you fast forward to now that number has exploded by 16 billion dollars. That is more then a billion dollars, each month, in credit card spending. Judged by volume credit card spending goes up even further from a mere 18.1 million transactions in 1994. In 2009 those transaction numbers were up 100 million more each month. Are we really buying more things that we need or spending more then we should? The answers to these questions are difficult and it is hard to understand why or how the explosion in spending happened. The only real way to resolve it is to start spending less, judging by the 2008 to 2009 statistics Australians may be taking note.