High inflation continues to repel Kiwi consumers from splashing the cash as economic uncertainty swirls.
Electronic card transactions fell 0.4 percent in April, according to data from Statistics NZ, after a 0.7 percent drop in March.
"We know people have been finding it tough because mortgage payments have gone up, and so people have less money to spend elsewhere," said Milford Asset Management portfolio manager Mark Riggall.
Kiwis used cards for more than $6.25 million worth of purchases in April, Stats NZ said, down $6.5m in April last year.
"If we look at spending now on a per-person basis, it's actually as bad - or if not worse - as it was during the GFC (global financial crisis)," Riggall told AM.
"It's not in total because we've obviously had migration coming in, so [the] population's grown by 3 percent and so that's boosted spending - but the data's clearly showing you that households are reining in spending."
Broken down by categories, the biggest fall in card spending was on apparel - which fell by 1.7 percent ($5.7m) the Stats NZ data showed. But bucking the trend was non-retail services (including travel and tour arrangement) which rose 2.2 percent ($47m).
"Tourism's going reasonably well... so arrival numbers continue to pick up and continue to recover to where we were pre-COVID," said Riggall. "So that's encouraging - that's people coming into the country and spending.
"The tourism part of the economy's still supporting what's going on."
According to ASB, the card transaction data showed spending "remained subdued as consumers keep their wallets shut given mounting headwinds".
"High interest rate settings are clearly working to crimp consumer spending but the RBNZ (Reserve Bank) will want to see more progress on reducing inflation before cutting the OCR," senior economist Mark Smith said of the official cash rate.
ASB was forecasting rate cuts in February, "with the OCR to remain at restrictive levels for a while after that", Smith said.
