Flowers, Spas and Jewellery Among Top Mother's Day Purchases in Canada

TORONTO, ONTARIO, May 11 (MARKET WIRE) --
Editors Note: A video is included with this press release.

Canadians certainly love their moms, lavishing them with flowers, spa
treatments and jewellery for Mother's Day 2009. Point-of-sale results
from Moneris Solutions, Canada's largest provider of payment processing
solutions, reveals that florists across the country experienced a surge
in business between the first weekend in May and Mother's Day weekend,
with credit card transactions jumping by 5 per cent over the previous
week in the flower, spa, jewellery and garden retail categories. Debit
cards were active, too, with florists processing 255 per cent more than
during than same period last week.

Spas and jewellery retailers across the country also experienced an
increase in debit and credit card transactions this past Mother's Day.
Pampered moms spent almost $1 million more than last weekend at spa
merchants, while jewellers saw their dollar volumes rise by 12 per cent.

"Most florists in Canada are small, independent businesses who do up to
three per cent of their annual business on the Mother's Day weekend,"
said Santo Ligotti, Director of Marketing, Moneris Solutions. "For these
merchants, having an efficient and reliable point-of-sale system that can
handle multiple methods of payment including gift cards is crucial to the
success of high traffic, large sales volume holidays. By combining Big
Box efficiency with the small business personal touch, these merchants
emerged as winners this Mother's Day."

Moneris' Mother's Day results also found signs of tightened discretionary
spending. From coast to coast, Canadians are spending more on their homes
as they reduce their travel, thereby benefitting home improvement
merchants. The desire to treat their primary residences as vacation
homes, combined with the warmer weather, has led to increased debit and
credit card dollar volumes for lawn and garden centres, too.

Moneris' infrastructure helps merchants process high volumes of
transactions and payments quickly and securely. The company's Mother's
Day data tallied the number of transactions and dollar value
differentials processed on its debit and credit card terminals at floral,
jewellery and spa merchants across Canada between the weekends of May 1-3
and May 9-11, 2009.

About Moneris Solutions

As one of North America's largest providers of payment processing
solutions, Moneris offers credit, debit, wireless and online payment
services for merchants in virtually every industry segment and processes
more than 3 billion transactions annually. Through its Ernex division,
Moneris offers electronic loyalty and stored-value gift card programs.
With more than 350,000 merchant locations, Moneris provides the hardware,
software and systems needed to improve business efficiency and manage
payments. For more information please visit www.moneris.com.

To view the video titled "Small business owner Andy Buyting discusses the
importance of efficient, reliable payment processing for his garden
centre's busiest day of the year", please visit the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXsiAfOY0Jg.

Contacts:
MAVERICK Public Relations Inc.
Annette Robertson
Media
(416) 640-5525 ext. 231
Email: annetter@maverickpr.com

Copyright 2009, Market Wire, All rights reserved.

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