NFC TimesThe premier source for news, analysis and commentary on
Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC TIMES Exclusive – At least 13,000 buses in the UK outside of London now accept open-loop contactless payments, and more rollouts are underway as part of a plan by UK bus operators to roll out contactless on all 32,000 buses operating in the UK outside of the capital, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Exclusive: While Apple Pay has re-energized interest in bank-issued mobile credit and debit cards using secure elements in NFC phones, backers of decoupled debit and other automated clearing house-based mobile-payments schemes continue to gear up.

While the UK’s top UK contactless issuer, Barclays, and its credit card arm, Barclaycard, predict a doubling of contactless transactions this year, numbers remain relatively small, with even the most active users tapping just over four times a month, a spokesman for the issuer confirmed to NFC Times.

The growing awareness and use of contactless bank cards by UK consumers is not apparently resulting in increased interest in mobile NFC payments.

The UK continues to expand its rollout of contactless, with Starbucks completing its deployment of contactless point-of-sale terminals at 550 coffee shops nationwide.

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.