Orange Tap And Go

MANY younger people are more likely to forget their wallet or purse than their mobile phone.

This is helping to drive banks towards the next step of contactless technology, using a mobile phone instead of a card to trigger a tap-and-go payment. Orange will start selling the first tap-and-go phones this summer. It has teamed up with Barclaycard to add the technology to phones. Combining phones and payments should open the way to more sophisticated applications, with users able to see their spending on screen.
Gerry McQuade, chief development officer of Everything Everywhere, which owns Orange, says: 'This is the beginning of a revolution in how we pay for items on the High Street.

'It is a cultural shift as important as the launches of the credit card and cash
machines.' Lloyds TSB wi!! soon start testing its own mobile phone payment system. Rather than requiring new handsets, customers will be able to add a case, tag or extra memory card to their existing phone.

The idea is to make the technology work with popular smart phones such at the iPhone or BiackBerry.

The bank hopes to launch the service this year