An initial trial for RBS and Natwest is currently underway, Visa said in a statement on Tuesday, with a full roll-out to follow in spring 2013.

The ‘digital wallet’ service, which will be available to both banks’ customers, will allow users to make online purchases without the need to enter their personal details or credit card number each time. The service will work on a computer browser, smartphone or tablet, Visa said.

To begin, customers pre-register credit or debit cards on Visa’s V.me website. When shopping online, consumers can then make payments by clicking on a V.me button at the checkout before entering their email address and password to confirm the payment.

By doing so, the service removes the need to re-enter credit card account number, billing and shipping information for every transaction.

Visa says the service also shields the customer’s credit card number from the merchant and provides bank-level security encryption for transactions.

The company hopes to pursuade retailers and e-commerce sites to use V.me as an alternative to rival payment merchant PayPal.

Mariano Dima, executive vice president of Product and Marketing Solutions at Visa Europe, said the company had received positive feedback from other UK banks looking to offer the service.

“Visa is committed to making online payments even easier and more secure, and our partners such as RBS are helping us make this vision a reality,” Dima said. "It is our intention to make the V.me brand as trusted and well known for digital payments as the Visa brand is on the high street today."

“We believe that a proposition which reduces the effort of buying things online, while also improving security, for our customers is exactly the sort of thing we want to deliver," said Steve Rubenstein, director of Everyday Banking at RBS. "V.me clearly delivers this and we look forward to offering it to our customers in 2013."

Visa’s new service has been significantly delayed, and was originally scheduled to go live in January 2012.