Irish shoppers to spend €257m online for Christmas as Cyber Monday kicks off


28 Nov 2011

Irish consumers could spend €257m online on presents for Christmas, with each person spending €155 on average, according to research released for Cyber Monday, the busiest online shopping day of the year.

iReach Market Research for Visa Europe conducted the research, using a representative sample of 1,000 people aged over 18.

Eighty-two per cent of Irish shoppers said they would buy goods online this year. Eighty-two per cent of Irish shoppers also enjoy the protection that credit and debit cards supply and 68pc are aware of their consumer rights about purchases they make online.

Visa Europe also believes that today will be the busiest online shopping day of the year. This day, which comes after the US’ Black Friday, is known as Cyber Monday and was created to encourage people to shop online for Christmas. On last year’s Cyber Monday, consumers shopping online generated US$1bn.

Almost 7m online transactions could be processed today across Europe alone, according to Visa Europe. This amounts to 4,800 each minute.

Transactions will peak during the lunch hour, from 1-2pm and will peak again after 7pm, when shoppers return home from work and go online.

“Online shopping continues to soar in popularity in Ireland, with consumers set to pick up a range of goods on the internet for Christmas,” says Conor Langford, vice-president of Visa Ireland. 

“We would remind shoppers to make sure that they place their orders early to ensure that they receive their goods on time,” he says.

Outside of online retail, the busiest high street shopping day of the year will fall two days before Christmas Day. Visa Europe still believes that Friday, 23 December, will be the busiest shopping day, in spite of the fact Christmas Eve falls on a Saturday this year.