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How San Francisco uses electronic payments


If you guessed that San Francisco residents love to spend money on tech, you’d be right. What you might not guess is just how pronounced that love is compared to the rest of the country. 

As a payments technology company, Visa processes an immense amount of purchasing data every day. That data not only enables us to pinpoint what people spend their money on in a particular city but also when the highest purchase volume is for different categories during the day.

Our infographic takes a look at one "day in the purchasing life" of San Francisco, revealing that the city’s residents love spending on tech, clothes, salon services and great food, with more than $5.7 million spent on salons, retail clothing and retail goods that day. 

In the "Eating and Drinking" categories, San Francisco residents love to "do lunch," with food transactions peaking around noon. They outspent the rest of the country in bars, restaurants and liquor stores, supporting the city’s reputation as one of the country’s best dining destinations.

San Franciscans also spend proportionally more on tech than the rest of the country: twelve percent of all the U.S. software transactions come from the area, even though the city is only about one quarter of one percent of the country's population.  

Want to see all the data? Check out our infographic.

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