During 2012 high street banks begin the widespread rollout of contactless enabled credit and debit cards to UK residents while new payment terminals were piloted during special events and also integrated on the London bus routes.

Hertfordshire, UK -- (SBWire) -- 12/31/2012 --In the beginning of 2012 a joint effort was made by credit and debit card suppliers Visa and Mastercard to make the public aware of a new method for payment that is much quicker than that of the chip and pin process. Some people had already seen the technology at special events where the brand name Visa ‘payWave’ and Mastercard ‘payPass’ had beta tested the technology allowing people to pay simply by holding a Barclaycard ‘contactless’ card over the card terminal.

The new way of making card payments is becoming popular because of a nationwide replacement of customer cards that has been undertaken by the major banks and there have also been mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung who have released the new model of their Galaxy S3 with NFC payment technology.

Near Field Communication(NFC) which is built into a device means that credit or debit cards, smartphones or keyfobs can transmit information to a contactless payment terminal via radio waves and this authorizes a transaction. While many heralded 2012 as the year in which NFC payments would really take off, they were a little premature and did not account for the general public’s natural concerns over a new introduction to payment processing.

As more and more people begin to see the ‘contactless symbol’ at their favourite restaurants or at the shopping mall they will begin to try it and start to enjoy the fact that they no longer have to insert their cards or enter a pin number all the time. Merchant’s also have an important role to play in educating customers that their are security measures in play here and that purchases must remain under the £20 per transaction limit, if more people are aware that restrictions are in place to prevent fraud they will feel more comfortable using it.

Critics of contactless payment also need to understand that there are still thousands of small businesses who have yet to set up the new technology and thanks to third party brokers who have recently begun renting these machines to businesses it has become a lot cheaper. Prior to merchant account providers acquiring the latest Ingenico models late in 2012, businesses would have to contact the banks themselves and this often resulted in high processing charges that were not beneficial for return on investment.

A website has been set up by NFC payment providers and useful information about the new technology can be found by contacting them at one of the following addresses:

124-126 High Street
Rickmansworth
Hertfordshire
United Kingdom
http://www.contactlesspayment.org.uk
Tel: 0800 980 4007
Email: info@seymourdirect.com