Record number of electronic payments processed

On Wednesday 24 December 2008, a total number of 9,783,925 debit and credit card payments were processed. Last year's daily record, which dated from Saturday 22 December 2007, amounted to 9,083,801 transactions. The new daily record thus exceeds the old record by no less than 7.7 per cent. The existing peak record has also been broken. On Wednesday 24 December our systems processed an average of 378 transactions per second between 14:30 - 15:00. This means an increase of 3.6 per cent in comparison with the existing record of 365 transactions per second, which dated from Monday 24 December 2007. The new peak record lies far beneath Equens' maximum system capacity, as our systems are able to handle peaks of over 500 transactions per second.