Mark Culleton, AIB head of channel adoption, says: “Christmas Day was traditionally a quiet day for banking, but that was emphatically not the case last year. Our data shows that 196,000 customers logged on during the festivities."

Banking activity varied from checking bank balances to actual transactions, he says, with 4000 customers paying bills, and 9000 making funds transfers. AIB also processed 10,000 mobile top-ups on Christmas Day last year.

On Christmas Day 2013, close to 3000 customers unwrapped their new tablets and installed AIB tablet banking whilst the data shows a further 2800 customers downloaded AIB mobile banking.

The Irish bank has seen a big move to mobile banking during 2014. It now has 514,000 active mobile banking customers with the number of customers banking on their mobiles and tablets on a daily basis exceeding the number accessing AIB online services on traditional computers.

Almost two million banking transactions were completed on AIB’s online channels in November and these volumes are steadily increasing, says Culleton.

“We are experiencing a major change in banking behaviour as customers are migrating to online channels in ever increasing numbers. Banks need to offer products that are suitable to the customer’s needs and enable access through many channels including branch, internet, ATM, kiosk, tablet, mobile and contact centres." he says.

AIB's data tallies with stats from Nationwide, which says that a third (32%) of its internet and mobile bank customers logged in on 25th December last year.

Around 240,000 people checked their Nationwide accounts on Christmas Day 2013, representing an increase of 140 per cent on figures recorded for 25 December 2012 (100,000).

However, despite the surge, one Christmas Day tradition held true as all but 4000 customers logged off by 3pm, in time for the Queen’s Speech.