Watch: Rory Cellan-Jones demonstrates how it can work

The 1st service that allows users to get hold of purchases via their itinerant has been launched within the UK. Among retailers signed up to the system are McDonalds, EAT, Pret-a-Manger and some Boots stores. Users wishing to use the system - dubbed Quick Tap - can need Orange and Barclaycard accounts and a handset founded for contactless payments.
The idea of the mobile wallet is gaining popularity around Europe.

Motorway toll

The service is made attainable by Near Field Communication (NFC), the short-vary wireless technology that underpins several wireless payment systems. Quick Tap could be a collaboration between Orange and Barclaycard. It will need a NFC-enabled Samsung Tocco Lite handset, that conjointly goes on sale on Friday. Only purchases up to a price of £15 will be made using the service but users can preload their mobile with up to £100.
"Having a wallet on my phone has created it a lot of a lot of convenient to create purchases traveling and I like that it permits me to keep track of what I'm spending as I go," said David Chan, chief government of Barclaycard Consumer.
"It is going to start a revolution in the means we obtain things on the high street," added Pippa Dunn, vp of Orange. Different stores signed up the service include Subway, Little Chef, Wilkinson and therefore the National Trust.
Later this summer, users will also be ready to use the service to pay the toll on the M6 motorway.

Olympic vision
Giles Ubaghs, an analyst with Datamonitor, thinks take-up might be sluggish. "It is an necessary first step but I assume there may be a scarcity of incentive. Early adopters could prefer it for the novelty price however the majority simply won't see the point," he said.
Mobile wallet services are obtainable in Japan for a few years and operator DoCoMo NTT spent a smart deal of cash obtaining them up and running. "They even had to shop for a convenience store chain to get the readers in there but all the proof is that people don't use it that usually. Only around 10p.c appear to use the NFC functionality on their phones," said Mr Ubaghs.

Mobile couponing, where individuals can swipe their handsets so as to induce discounts on merchandise, may kickstart NFC technology, he thinks. Or it could notice popularity in the future as an alternative to Bluetooth. "It might be used for swapping data from phone to phone or for, say, taking photos from a phone and putting them on a TV," he said.
Nokia is believed to be bringing out an NFC-enabled version of the popular game Angry Birds later this year. In 2009 O2 trialled contactless payments, using mobiles rather than the favored Oyster card which allows commuters to pay for their tube journeys.
It has said it will launch its mobile wallet service later this year. By the time of the Olympics it is expected that transactions, transport and tickets will all be accessible via contactless technology.
Currently there are fifty,0zero0 stores with NFC-enabled readers within the UK.
Some twelve.9 million credit and debit cards are already in circulation.