Today, any debit or credit card that carries the contactless symbol can buy you a coffee in Starbucks, a pen in Paperchase, socks in Marks and Spencer or a Big Mac. Such convenient single-tap payments speed up small-value transactions.

Even better, a mobile phone equipped with Pingit – a peer-to-peer payment system launched by Barclays in 2012 – can do all of this and more. Later this year, UK customers of HSBC, Santander, Metro Bank and Nationwide will be able to use a mobile payment system, Zapp, developed by VocaLink, which operates the UK national payments infrastructure.

The biggest fly in the ointment is security. Last year, some M&S customers said unauthorised payments had been made using their contactless cards. A survey by YouGov last December showed that 56 per cent of respondents did not believe NFC (near field communication) payments were safe.