Flowers, Spas and Jewellery Among Top Mother’s Day Purchases in Canada

Reliable Point-of-Sale Solutions Crucial for Florists Who Process Up to Three Per Cent of Annual Business on Mother’s Day Alone

Canadians certainly love their moms, lavishing them with flowers, spa treatments and jewellery for Mother’s Day 2009. Point-of-sale results from Moneris Solutions, Canada’s largest provider of payment processing solutions, reveals that florists across the country experienced a surge in business between the first weekend in May and Mother’s Day weekend, with credit card transactions jumping by 5 per cent over the previous week in the flower, spa, jewellery and garden retail categories. Debit cards were active, too, with florists processing 255 per cent more than during than same period last week.

Spas and jewellery retailers across the country also experienced an increase in debit and credit card transactions this past Mother’s Day. Pampered moms spent almost $1 million more than last weekend at spa merchants, while jewellers saw their dollar volumes rise by 12 per cent.

“Most florists in Canada are small, independent businesses who do up to three per cent of their annual business on the Mother’s Day weekend,” said Santo Ligotti, Director of Marketing, Moneris Solutions. “For these merchants, having an efficient and reliable point-of-sale system that can handle multiple methods of payment including gift cards is crucial to the success of high traffic, large sales volume holidays. By combining Big Box efficiency with the small business personal touch, these merchants emerged as winners this Mother’s Day.”

Moneris’ Mother’s Day results also found signs of tightened discretionary spending. From coast to coast, Canadians are spending more on their homes as they reduce their travel, thereby benefitting home improvement merchants. The desire to treat their primary residences as vacation homes, combined with the warmer weather, has led to increased debit and credit card dollar volumes for lawn and garden centres, too.

Moneris’ infrastructure helps merchants process high volumes of transactions and payments quickly and securely. The company’s Mother’s Day data tallied the number of transactions and dollar value differentials processed on its debit and credit card terminals at floral, jewellery and spa merchants across Canada between the weekends of May 1-3 and May 9-11, 2009.

Original Press Release

Andy