Online retailers are braced for their busiest day of the year as consumers take part in the annual pre-Christmas shopping spree dubbed Cyber Monday.
Recent years have seen online shopping figures consistently peaking on the first Monday in December, probably explained by most UK consumers having just received their last pay cheque before Christmas.
Visa Europe predicts about £320 million will be spent on its cards alone as online transactions top 6.8 million, an increase of 21% on last year, making December 3 the busiest online shopping day in history.
It said: "A combination of pay day for the majority of consumers falling on the last Friday of the month and a weekend spent browsing the shops results in shoppers logging on to buy their gifts online on the subsequent Monday.
"All of these factors will result in consumers spending £222,222 per minute, making 4722 transactions every 60 seconds."
Visa Europe commercial director Dr Steve Perry said: "On Mega Monday, people across the UK will go online and use their Visa cards to make 6.8 million transactions, the most in a single day in UK history. That's 21% more than in 2011, signalling that consumers are becoming increasingly accustomed to the advantages of shopping online for everyday purchases and special items."
Amazon.co.uk also predicts Cyber Monday to be its biggest single day, with orders set to peak at 9.20pm.
Christopher North, managing director of Amazon.co.uk, said: "As people increasingly shop on mobile devices and benefit from fast broadband at home, we're seeing a move towards customers buying their Christmas gifts later in the evening when they are at home relaxing."
Marks & Spencer also said it was prepared for what it expects to be its busiest day of the year.On the equivalent Monday last year, M&S online orders were triple that of an average day, with one placed every second.
The busiest shopping day on the high street often falls two days before Christmas Day, with the weekend of December 22 and 23 expected to draw peak numbers of shoppers this year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article