(Bloomberg) — JPMorgan Chase & Co. said it set a daily record for card-payment processing over Cyber Weekend last month, offering a sign that U.S. consumers are opening their wallets this holiday season even as the pandemic continues.
At their peak over Cyber Weekend, payments were 50% higher than the average day in 2021, according to data from JPMorgan. In-store transactions surpassed 2019 levels and online shopping continued to grow even after last year’s surge, when shoppers avoided stores due on Covid-19 concerns. Cyber Weekend refers to the four-day period beginning on Black Friday, the unofficial kickoff of the U.S. holiday shopping season.
The figures offer more evidence that U.S. consumers are still spending, even with fears over the Omicron variant. American Express Co. Chief Financial Officer Jeff Campbell said last week that consumer retail spending on the firm’s cards so far this quarter has soared 30% from pre-pandemic levels.
Read more: AmEx Sees Holiday Spending Soaring as Omicron Fails to Bite
At JPMorgan, volumes for the entire month of November were up double-digit percentages from 2019 and 2020, meaning holiday spending is spread more evenly throughout the month instead of just over the week of Thanksgiving. Many merchants began their Black Friday deals earlier in November and saw elevated volumes throughout the month, according to the firm’s data.
JPMorgan’s merchant-services group, which makes money in part by helping retailers process card transactions, handled about $1.6 trillion in payments last year.
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