The Monday after the first weekend of December has been dubbed Mega Monday. It’s been identified as the busiest day of online sales of the year. This year, according to The Times, the online tills will ring to the tune of £5 billion, with total online sales for December 2007 estimated at £15 billion.

“Monday is the traditional big day for online shopping because buyers usually turn to the internet after having failed to find what they wanted in shops at the weekend. They also go online to see if they can find a better deal on an item seen in a shop.”

As an online incentive company, we see a similar pattern to e-commerce sites. Users of our iD-points products are redeeming points faster than ever – this week will see more points redeemed than any other week in our history.

Meanwhile this video news article on the BBC shows that some people still like going to the shops. “It’s all about the shopping experience”, claims a John Lews spokesman. But online shopping is now firmly established as an alternative to those for whom battling the madding crowds down the high street is not a positive user experience.

Online incentive solutions are to vouchers as e-commerce is to high street shopping. And the growth of web-based incentive schemes is set to follow the growth of online shopping.

Transport for London have announced this week, that London Underground are ready to launch a system to enable passengers to pay for their train journeys with a mobile phone. The system would initially be launched with handset manufacturer Nokia and phone network O2, but would almost certainly extend to other mobile makes and networks.

This inevitable step follows the launch of the Oyster contact card payment system, and last month’s launch of a combined credit card and Oyster card from Barclaycard.

Over 50% of all phones sold in Japan have the embedded RFID chips that enable this technology. Contactless payment by mobile phones is set to become part of everyday life.

At IncentiveDirect, we believe that the future of incentives are mobile and connected, combining the freedom of choice of vouchers, with the communication and reporting features that a mobile, online solution can offer. We continue to monitor developments in this sector, and evaluate tools and technologies.

Barclaycard have recently launched the OnePulse card which combines a credit card, cashless payment card and an Oyster card for contact-less payments including travel on London Transport.

You can find out more at Barclaycard’s faintly ridiculous Institute of Future Living.

We continue to track new formats for payments, which will trickle down to the incentives, creating new ways that they are distributed and redeemed.

As we have stated previously, the future of incentives is connected and mobile.