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Consumers in Europe did 19 million transactions with Visa-branded contactless bank cards in March, up by nearly 50% from December, announced Visa Europe Tuesday, which predicts monthly transactions will increase to 52 million by the end of 2013.

Marks & Spencer, one of the UK’s largest retailers, announced today it had rolled out contactless payment to 644 of its UK stores and said 14% of its card transactions under £20 (US$30.97) are contactless.

Visa Europe predicts the UK will have 34 million contactless Visa-branded cards on issue and 175,000 contactless terminals deployed by the end of 2013, with Europe reaching 70 million Visa-branded contactless cards and 650,000 contactless terminals this year.

While a sizable percentage of UK consumers say they are ready to use their smartphones as mobile wallets to make payments at the physical point of sale–especially if they receive incentives and security assurances–mobile wallets are unlikely to take off in 2013, according to UK-based market research firm ICM Research.

Transport for London officially announced the launch of the first phase of its open-loop payment service, allowing riders to tap their contactless credit, debit and charge cards to pay fares on more than 8,000 buses.

While giant UK retailer Tesco is following NFC and contactless payment “intensively” and continues to trial contactless acceptance in more than 30 stores, it has not yet committed to rolling out the technology, in part because of security concerns among customers, said one of Tesco’s mobile chiefs.

UK bank NatWest has enabled 1,000 customers to tap to pay with its TouchPay service using a Visa payWave applicati

The European Commission announced today it has unconditionally approved the creation of a proposed mobile-commerce joint venture by the three largest operators in the UK, Everything Everywhere, Telefónica UK and Vodafone UK.

Orange UK and Barclaycard have announced the availability of the popular Samsung Galaxy S III for their Quick Tap NFC payment service, as they seek to spur interest in their as yet little-used service.

Marks & Spencer, one of the UK’s largest retailers, is reportedly the latest merchant to adopt contactless payment.