The first Monday in December has come to mark the kick-off of an online shopping frenzy leading up to Christmas, with Brits taking to their computers, mobile phones and tablets to buy must-have items.

Visa Europe says records will again be broken this year, with 6.8 million online transactions using its credit and debit cards on the day, up 21% on 2011, as shoppers spend £222,222 per minute.

The most popular time for spending is expected to be between 8:00pm and 9:00pm while people are increasingly turning to mobile devices to carry out their transactions. Department store giant John Lewis has seen mobile traffic and orders to its site more than treble over the last year and a third of customers are now shopping using handheld devices.

Last week UK retail association IMRG forecast a £920 million spend by consumers using mobile devices in the first two weeks of December alone; nearly a quarter of all £4.6 billion in online shopping.

Steve Perry, commercial director, Visa Europe, says: "Online shopping now accounts for a significant proportion of all retail spend. This reflects the confidence that shoppers feel about the security of using their Visa cards for online transactions."

Meanwhile, in the US 'Cyber Monday' is gaining ground on 'Black Friday', according to a poll of 2115 adults by Harris Interactive on behalf of CouponCabin.com.

Nearly half of Cyber Monday shoppers will spend more money online that day than they will in-store the during the rest of the holiday season. The holiday has gone mobile as well with more than a quarter of smartphone and tablet owners planning to shop online on Cyber Monday on their devices.

More than four-in-ten smartphone owners who plan to shop online on Cyber Monday said they will "showroom" certain products on Black Friday with the intention to buy them on tow days later.