<P> McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Boots, Eat, Heron Foods, Pret a Manger, Stagecoach Group, Subway, AMT Coffee, Tesco, Asda and Lidl are among the retailers offering contactless payments to their customers in the UK . In March 2008, Eat became the first restaurant chain to adopt contactless . </P> <P> Major financial entities now offering contactless payment systems include MasterCard, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, American Express, KeyBank, Barclays, Barclaycard, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, FreedomPay, The Co-operative Bank, Nationwide Building Society and The Royal Bank of Scotland Group . Visa payWave, American Express Expresspay, and MasterCard Contactless are examples of contactless credit cards which have become widespread in the U.S. and UK . </P> <P> The first contactless cards in the UK were issued by Barclaycard in 2007 . As of December 2014, there are approximately 58 million contactless - enabled cards in use, in the UK, and over 147,000 terminals in use though this is growing in numbers and percentages of adoption . </P> <P> Telecom operators are starting to get involved in contactless payments via the use of near field communication phones . Belgacom's Pingping, for example, has a stored value account and via a partnership with Alcatel - Lucent's Touchatag provides contactless payment functionalities . In January 2010, Barclaycard partnered with mobile phone firm Orange, to launch a contactless credit card in the UK . Orange and Barclaycard also announced in 2009 that they would be launching a mobile phone with contactless technology . </P>

When was contactless payment introduced in the uk