PSCU: Owner CUs Saw Rising Debit, Credit Sales Volumes Over The Holidays

Payments credit union service organization (CUSO) PSCU reported 11.4 percent year-over-year debit and credit overall same-store sales volume growth among its owner credit unions over the 2020 holiday season, according to a press release emailed to PYMNTS.

PSCU’s Data & Analytics and Advisors Plus workforces collected and examined information from credit unions that harnessed PSCU for credit and/or debit processing during the 2020 and 2019 holiday seasons to calculate the 2020 holiday data.

“This year’s holiday shopping season was dramatically different from prior years as the COVID- 19 pandemic continues to impact and shift consumer behavior,” Glynn Frechette, senior vice president, Advisors Plus at PSCU, said in the announcement. “More consumers shopped earlier and from home, further accelerating the adoption of contactless and digital payment methods.”

Purchases between Nov. 2 and Dec. 27 in the retail goods space among the organization’s owner credit unions were up 26.2 percent for debit and 18.1 percent for credit, coming out far above the 3.6 percent to 5.2 percent market rate that the National Retail Federation (NRF) had predicted, according to the release.

PSCU found that holiday purchases took place much earlier in November compared to past years as merchants marketed “Black Friday” sales at the beginning of November to contend with market uncertainty amid the coronavirus. The two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, which spanned from Nov. 9 to Nov. 22, brought about the most formidable year-over-year rises in purchase growth for debit (34.6 percent) and credit (27.4 percent.)

In addition, PSCU found that increased adoption of contactless “tap and go” transactions through dual interface cards continued to occur during last year’s holiday season. Debit contactless transactions expanded to 17.1 percent of card present activity on contactless debit cards between the beginning of November and the end of December, as contactless credit transactions expanded to 12.1 percent of card present activity on contactless credit cards.

The PYMNTS December Credit Union Tracker®, done with the help of PSCU, found that “digital-first approaches are … expected to remain a staple of credit unions’ operations as they craft their innovation strategies for the next year and beyond, especially as 88 percent of CUs surveyed in early 2020 said that they intended to focus more on technologies than they had during the previous year.”