Interesting press release from PAYMARK today.  It is good to see the continued education of the market which will be all important with the increase in variety of card and transactional types.

In fact, plastic is so fantastic in New Zealand that on average each of us uses our EFTPOS or credit card 250 times a year, which per capita is the highest in the world.

They have some great information on the the increase in transactions in the lead up to Christmas.

Looking ahead, Mr Tong’s expecting big things, especially since Christmas Eve falls on a Wednesday.

“We’ll see well over 100 transactions a second, and probably roughly $200 million a day.”

Mars and Venus will do it without breaking into a sweat, working at just 30 percent capacity when trading is at their heaviest, which Mr Tong says he can predict down to the second.

“It will peak at 12.10:53pm on Christmas Eve,” he says.

See more on tv3 site here. It is good to see that the servers run at only 30% capacity during our busiest time.

Its that time of year where the more hirsute of us grow the mo to support a couple of charities. Namely Prostate Cancer and Mens Mental Health.  It is also a good chance to see what one would look like as Magnum PI.  The fact remain that most of us just look like slightly deviant traffic cops from the seventies.

Anyway if you want to see how we are doing check out the following Movember page and if the mood strikes then please donate.

Here is the photo of Mark to circulate around the kids.

Men’s depression in proud partnership with the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand’s ‘Out of the Blue’ campaign - because 1 in 10 men experience depression during their lifetime but most don’t seek help.  Depression is a known high risk factor for suicide which, unfortunately ranks New Zealand with the fourth highest rate of suicide per capita. 

Prostate cancer in proud partnership with the Cancer Society of New Zealand - because every year in New Zealand 2,700 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and about 600 die of the disease, making prostate cancer the second largest cause of male cancer deaths, after lung cancer.

We are please to be able to bring two new products choices for those wishing to connect to the eftpos new zealand network.  These are new on the eftpos new zealand network and are manufactured by Verifone the number two eftpos manufacturer in the world.

There is a choice of a one piece standalone unit the VX570 or the mobile unit, the VX610, that operates over the GPRS network.

Check out details online here.

This month we have used our charity donation to support one of our staff in her efforts at raising money for The National Heart Foundation.  Nalini has signed up to be a Heart Walker and will be looking for eftpos and sponsorship opportunities on her walks.

Good luck for the walks Nalini and great effort.

For those customers awaiting upgrade on the eftpos new zealand network they have just annouced an extension for the deadline to the 30th of November 2008.

Our upgrades are on track to be completed by the 7th of November 2008. After this date if you receive correspondence from eftpos new zealand then please give us a call on 0800 484 238.

Eftpos New Zealand Dispensation Letter Oct 2008