Swiss retailers celebrate successful Christmas

Overall, Swiss retailers recorded 3% more sales with payments via credit, debit and mobile payments in the run-up to Christmas than in the previous year. © Keystone / Christian Beutler

Despite inflation, consumers in Switzerland spent more money on Christmas presents in 2023 than in previous years. Cashless payments reached a record level in the run-up to Christmas.

Rising prices did not have a negative impact on this year’s Christmas business. On the contrary: from December 1 to 24, Swiss retailers earned more from cashless payments than ever before, according to an analysis by the news agency AWP based on data from Monitoring Consumption Switzerland going back to 2019.

Overall, Swiss retailers recorded 3% more sales with payments via credit, debit and mobile payments in the run-up to Christmas than in the previous year. Compared to 2021, the increase was even 13%.

Sales figures on December 24 were significantly lower than in previous years because Christmas Eve was on a Sunday. However, customers simply did their Christmas shopping earlier than usual. They spent the most money on December 22 and 23.

+ Inflation bites into Swiss Christmas budgets

A strikingly high number of Christmas presents were paid for via smartphone: sales through mobile payments increased by more than half compared to the previous year. Overall, the mobile share of all cashless payments from December 1 to 24, 2023, was over 12%. In 2022, the share was still significantly lower at 8%.

Monitoring Consumption defines mobile payments as all payments that are transferred directly from customers’ bank accounts via smartphone apps such as Twint, Alipay and WeChat Pay. However, payments via Google Pay, Samsung Pay and Apple Pay are not included in this category because they are processed via a credit card.

Importance of Christmas

As with this year’s Black Friday, customers are once again increasingly pulling out their credit cards in shops for Christmas shopping. In the week leading up to Christmas, the proportion of all credit card payments at the point of sale was over 90%, which was significantly higher than in previous years.

+ How bad is inflation in Switzerland?

Christmas sales remain the most important sales driver for the Swiss retail trade. The month of December, and in particular the week leading up to Christmas, always sees the highest sales figures.

The data from Monitoring Consumption Switzerland includes cashless payments that are processed via the network of the financial services provider Worldline in Switzerland. They are made available to the public for research purposes. Cash payments are not included in the statistics. For data protection reasons, no absolute figures are shown.

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here. 

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].