From the second half of this year, 15 stores in London and six in Liverpool will let customers make payments of under £10 by tapping their MasterCard PayPass cards against specially equipped terminals.

As acquirers, RBS Worldpay will work with Boots to develop and implement the system in the stores.

Roberto Tittarelli, head, commerce development, MasterCard Europe, says: "As part of MasterCard's strategy of strengthening merchant relationships, we're delighted to be working with one of the UK's leading retailers to make consumers' lives easier by allowing them to simply Tap & Go."

Boots is the first high street retailer in the UK to trial contactless technology, which is swiftly gaining popularity in the country. BarclayCard has issued over a million NFC-enabled cards and in March began incorporating the technology as standard.

Amer Sajed, managing director of UK Cards at Barclaycard comments: "Contactless is the future of payments and we are pleased to see that other card issuers and retailers are following our lead in the market. Consumer feedback highlights the increasing demand for contactless payments and we hope other retailers will follow Boots and introduce contactless payment facilities in store in our continuing aim to achieve a contactless Britain."

So far London has been the centre of the contactless revolution but last year MasterCard and RBS teamed with Stagecoach to trial a combined contactless bank and transit card in Liverpool.

Last month it emerged that Boots is considering following Tesco's lead and moving into personal banking. Stefano Pessina, executive chairman of Alliance Boots, told the FT that while financial services was not on his immediate "to do" list, he has talked about launching banking products in the company's 2600 pharmacies and stores.