The lowest increase in consumer spending in physical shops in more than two years was recorded in September with the Dublin Bus strike blamed for the sluggish growth.
However, a sharp rise in online spending offset the difficulties experienced by high-street retailers and led to year-on-year spending going up by just over 5 per cent, figures published this morning indicate.
According to the latest Visa consumer spending index, expenditure across all categories is up just over 5 per cent compared with 12 months previously.
The latest increase was weaker than the average seen over the course of the last two years, with a wide divergence between the rate of expansion in spending via ecommerce and face-to-face categories once recorded in September.
In September, online spending was up 13.4 per cent compared with a year ago but it was a different story when it came to face- to-face spending, which recorded an increase of just 0.8 per cent year on year, the weakest expansion in the 25 months of the series to date.
