The Post Office is to install contactless payment terminals across its entire network of branches, it announced yesterday.
Starting next month, a total of 30,000 near-field communication (NFC) payments terminals will be installed in 11,500 Post Office branches across the UK. The Post Office says this will make it the "biggest user of contactless payments acceptance technology in Europe".
The system will accept payments of up to £20 from NFC-enabled smartphones, as well as from Mastercard and Visa contactless credit and debit cards.
Earlier this week, analyst company Gartner forecast strong growth in mobile payment transaction value, saying worldwide transaction value will pass £100 billion this year.
However, the firm estimates that NFC will only make up a small part of overall mobile payments up until 2016, with web based mobile payments through large e-retailers like Amazon accounting for most of the value.
The Post Office is currently in the middle of a transformation programme, having become independent from the Royal Mail on April 1 this year.
In April, it issued a £100 million tender to consolidate its IT services engagements. It is also building an identity assurance system in order to provide indentity services to the government through its Identity Assurance scheme.
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Last week, the Post Office dropped BT as the network supplier that supports it home broadband services, appointing Fujitsu, TalkTalk and Capita instead.
