What do consumers in Switzerland spend their money on? To find out, it’s best to go straight to the source—that is, where payments are made. Since the share of cash payments in Switzerland is steadily declining (see Swiss Payment Monitor), payment terminals in stores, restaurants, and other venues are particularly important. As part of two projects at the University of St.Gallen (HSG), the relevant data is processed and visualized. This makes it possible to identify consumption patterns and track the economic impact of specific events or seasonal effects—long before official statistics are available. For researchers as well as businesses, this provides important insights, e.g. regarding consumer sentiment.
The Monitoring Consumption Switzerland initiative visualizes the volume of card transactions in Switzerland (debit and credit cards as well as mobile payments). This allows conclusions to be drawn about the consumer mood in Switzerland and the economic effects of major events such as the Eurovision Song Contest or large sports events.
Monitoring Consumption Switzerland is an initiative coordinated by HSG with the support of Worldline. The platform is operated by a team lead Prof. Matthias Fengler (Chair of Financial Econometrics) and Prof. Winfried Koeniger (Swiss Institute for Empirical Economic Research).
Aggregated and anonymized payment data is used to record consumer spending in Switzerland. A distinction is also made between domestic and foreign cards. The data is representative as a clear majority of card transactions in Switzerland are considered. All data is freely accessible on the corresponding website. The owner of the data, which is currently updated weekly, is Worldline (terminal acquiring data).
The chart shows the transaction volume of spending made with cards in Switzerland per week, scaled with the average daily transaction volume in January 2020. Current year in red.
Further data analyses and visualizations, as well as blog articles showing how the data can be interpreted for longer periods or individual events, can be found at: monitoringconsumption.com.
The Consumer Spending Index initiative goes a step further by making spending comparable over longer time horizons. To achieve this, an adjustment is made to account for changes in the number of retailers included in the sample and in payment behavior (cash versus card payments). The constructed consumer spending index visualizes consumer spending in Switzerland by region and merchant category. This allows for more reliable conclusions and helps identify how consumption patterns change over the medium and long term.
The Consumer Spending Index is an initiative of HSG supported by Worldline. The platform is operated by a team led by Prof. Matthias Fengler (Chair of Financial Econometrics) and Prof. Winfried Koeniger (Swiss Institute for Empirical Economic Research). Aggregated and anonymized payment data is used to track consumer spending in Switzerland. The data is representative, as it covers a significant majority of card transactions in Switzerland. All data is freely available on the corresponding website. Worldline is the owner of the data (terminal acquiring data). The analyses on the website are updated once a month, in the second week of each month.
The chart shows the breakdown of changes in monthly consumer spending by region and merchant category compared to the same month of the previous year. The overall change (bottom right) is broken down into the 7 major regions and 6 expenditure categories.
Detailed documentation on the index can be found in the White Paper.
