Holiday Online Purchases

The strong increases in online payment transactions noticed by merchant acquirers and others in November continued through the entire holiday shopping season, according to recently released data. Leading e-commerce acquirer First Data reported on Thursday (1/5/2012) that its Cyber Holiday Pulse Index recorded nearly 360 million transactions valued at approximately $14.5 billion from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31, up 38% and 26% respectively from the year-earlier period.