Barclaycard, the UK credit card issuer, is to invest “a seven-figure sum” in contactless payment technology in what could be a major boost for mobile payments, reports The Press Association. The company says it is aiming to have 1 million customers upgraded to its OnePulse payment system by the end of the year with compatible terminals installed in 9,000 shops across the UK. OnePulse was launched in London last year and enables people to buy items costing less than £10 by touching their card against a sensor and is also compatible with the London Underground’s Oyster contactless travelcard. Antony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclaycard, said the technology could be used to make payments using “mobile, key fob or even via biometrics.”

Barclaycard was one of the financial institutions involved in the recent trial involving O2 UK that saw the Oyster travelcard embedded into a Nokia phone. The handset, which uses NFC contactless technology, allowed users to pay for their journey by swiping their phone over a reader in the same way they would a travelcard, and also pay for small purchases in shops. According to an O2 survey, nine out of ten trial participants were happy using the technology, and the majority (78 percent) said they would be interested in using mobile contactless services for travel or payment in future. O2 also said it was in talks with other handset manufacturers (aside from Nokia) with regards to developing NFC phones. Meanwhile, in separate NFC news, Alcatel-Lucent’s Ventures programme today launched ‘tikitag,’ a consumer service enabling the launching of online applications by touching an NFC device, such as a mobile phone, to an item tagged with an NFC chip. Tikitag will be offered as a beta starter package on October 1 through e-commerce websites.