How Northern Ireland used its spend local cards revealed as Department for the Economy shares data

Northern Ireland spent over £130million on the High Street Voucher Scheme.

The Spend Local cards were available for every adult in Northern Ireland who applied for one at the end of 2021.

Each card had £100 of credit, the only restriction being that they had to be spent in person in a NI business.

They were part of the Stormont Executive's plan to help reinvigorate NI's high street shops after the impact of Covid.

But just how did the Northern Irish public use their cards? New data has been released by the Department for the Economy.

How much was spent with the cards?

The cards were certainly widely used by the public. A total of £136.5m was spent on the cards.

The public made a total of 3,713,609 transactions with their cards, with an average spend of £97.94 per person.

This means that a majority of people spent the majority of money available to them on their cards, although one or two people were left with a cup of coffee's worth of money unspent. One occasion where saving wasn't the wise choice.

Where did people use their cards?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the vast majority of cards were spent in local shops.

The official stats show that 87% of the total spend was used in retail businesses, with a total of £118m.

The next most popular place to spend money was in food service and accommodation businesses, with £10m spent there.

The goal of the scheme was to help businesses hit by the lockdowns.

Businesses that had been forced to close during the 2020 lockdowns received 62% of the total.

When did people spend their money?

The middle weekend of November was a popular time for popping out and using your free hundred quid apparently.

Sunday 14 November was the busiest day both for number of transactions and for the total spent.

People made 104,477 transactions with their cards that day, dishing out £4m to local businesses.