Advice Offered On Avoiding Holiday Shopping Crowds

We have a little more than two weeks to go before Christmas and the stores are getting crowded. If you don’t like the crowds and want to avoid them, MasterCard’s Global Technology and Operations headquarters in O’Fallon, has some advice. MasterCard’s Linda Locke says transaction records show Saturdays before Christmas are the busiest days, while Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays are less packed. Locke says this year’s businest day is expected to be Thursday, the 23rd. The Saturday before Christmas is usually the busiest, but that goes by the wayside this year because Christmas falls on a Saturday. MasterCard’s calculations on the busiest and least busy days are arrived at by keeping track of worldwide credit card transactions which are recorded at the company’s O’Fallon operation.