Almost 600,000 customers in Poland used Android Pay and other host card emulation (HCE) based mobile payment services in the three months to end-September, an increase of almost 180,000 over Q2.

In a report covering Q3 2017, Poland-based publication Cashless said there was a sharp upturn in use of mobile payments in the country, with some 590,000 transactions conducted during the recent quarter compared with 410,000 in Q2.

Providing more context on the statistics, Cashless (which derived its data from the country’s banks) said there had been an increase of more than 400,000 customers using mobile payments from Q3 2016.

The fact the number of people using mobile and contactless payments had tripled year-on-year pointed to “a very quick absorption of new technologies on the Polish market”, Cashless observed.

Polish bank PKO BP boasts the largest number of customers using smartphones to pay at point-of-sale terminals, with more than 120,000. BZ WBK, meanwhile, is in second place with more than 100,000 HCE and Android Pay users.

In Q3, the number of banks offering smartphone payment solutions also grew, with BGZ BNP Paribas joining the party.