More and more people will be making purchases through a single swipe of their mobile phones in the future, a credit reports firm has said.
Credit cards are set to be supplanted by contactless payments systems in the future, Equifax suggested today.
The credit reports firm also said today that the new payment method needs to be the subject of increased security due to its vulnerability to fraud. Contactless payments work by users paying for goods by touching a special sensor in a card on to a reader - automatically deducting the relevant amount from their account.
Firms such as Barclaycard have already expressed interest in incorporating the technology in to mobile phones, in order to make the process still easier for customers.
While this has the advantage of speed and convenience - as customers don't need to hand over cash or enter a PIN - the very novelty of the payment method could prove attractive to fraudsters.
Neil Munroe, external affairs director at Equifax, commented: "[Providers] want to make sure that nobody's affected by stealing that transaction information or somebody's ID but at the same time they will want to be aware that too many stages will turn people off… Fraudsters will get into this area."
Recent figures from payments association APACS show that, in the second quarter of 2008, there were 1.8 billion plastic card purchases made in the UK. The total spend from these transactions came to £92.6 billion, 7.8 percent higher than that of the second quarter of 2007.
