Holiday Shopping

VeriSign announced some data on holiday shopping volumes being processed by VeriSign Payment Services:

Since Thanksgiving through December 16, 2003, VeriSign Payment Services has processed more than 23.6 million Internet merchant payment transactions totaling approximately $3.54 billion in online sales volume. During the same period last year, VeriSign processed 16.9 million transactions totaling approximately $2.89 billion in online sales volume.

The average size of a single consumer transaction during this year's holiday season is also up by more than 16 percent at $142 per transaction, versus approximately $122 per transaction last year. In addition, total sales volumes for all VeriSign payments merchants combined increased by more than 22 percent over the same holiday shopping period during 2002.

So far, the single busiest online holiday shopping day of the year for VeriSign payment merchants was the Monday following Thanksgiving, when VeriSign processed 1.68 million of their online transactions.