Britain's national Post Office service will begin to rollout contactless payment terminals at its 11,500 branches from June 6th. MasterCard PayPass and Visa PayWave cards will be supported, alongside Near Field Communication (NFC)-enabled phones to let customers pay for transactions up to £20 ($30). The rollout will focus initially on 200 branches near Olympic Games venues in London before reaching all Post Office counters by the end of October.

Although services such as Google Wallet are still unavailable in the UK, a number of phones support NFC, including the recently launched Samsung Galaxy S III and the upcoming Nokia Lumia 610 NFC. The timing of the Post Office announcement comes on the same day that online payment giant PayPal launched its UK-only app for Android and iOS called PayPal InStore. The app allows customers to make payments using PayPal and their smartphone without NFC, using a traditional barcode system. Mobile payments have yet to rollout widely in the UK, but the Post Office support of NFC is a big win for the technology that's still in its infancy.