EAT's customers will be able to pay for transactions of £10 and under by tapping MasterCard Paypass or Visa Paywave cards against the new Common Sense-supplied card reader. The external reader, which feature a large LCD screen to display payments information to shoppers, is integrated with Commidea's fixed counter top Chip and PIN terminals. Barclaycard Business will act as merchant provider.

The first system has been installed at EAT's Moorgate branch in the City, with a further 24 London branches set to roll out the technology over the next few weeks.

James McDonald, head, contactless, Barclaycard Business, says: "This fully integrated solution has opened up the doors to contactless for a huge number of retailers who have their own e-pos system. The technology can process payments in less than half a second, enabling retailers to serve more customers and reduce queues at busy times."

Commidea says EAT has 350,000 customers per week and an average transaction value of less than £5 - leaving the merchant ideally placed to benefit from contactless technology.

Both Mastercard and Visa launched their respective contactless technologies in the UK last year. Barclaycard offers a combined contactless Oyster travel and debit card, OnePulse, in London, which incorporates Visa's Paywave contactless payment technology.

UK payments association Apacs has estimated that over five million contactless cards will have been issued by the end of 2008 and that they will be accepted in at least 100,000 merchants across the country.

However, security concerns have been raised over the technology. Last month security expert Adam Laurie conducted a demonstration in which he pulled the name, account number and expiration date from an audience member's RFID enabled American Express card - without removing the plastic from the victim's wallet.