The trials of the technology - which requires customers to check-in at an electronic box on their table - comes as Barclaycard releases new research which found that 95% of restauranteurs would prefer their staff to focus on delivering good service, rather than spending time on taking payment.

Using Dine & Dash users store their payment details in the app and check in by tapping their phone against a colour-coded electronic totem at their table. Having finished the meal, diners can simply get up and go, with payment automatically taken from their stored credentials. The app applies proximity tracking to sense when users have left the restaurant and releases the table to waiting staff.

Diners can also check out in the app where they will have the option to split the bill, add a tip and apply a discount code. All diners can see their bill total in real time and receive a digital receipt via Barclays' partnership with startup Flux.

Dine & Dash builds on the ‘invisible payments’ technology Barclaycard trialled in 2017 with Grab + Go. That pilot enabled employees to turn their mobile phones into pocket checkouts to scan and pay for goods in the Barclays’ staff restaurants.

Nick Kerigan, managing director of future payments at Barclaycard, says: “Building on our experience in invisible payments, we wanted to use Dine & Dash to unlock a whole host of benefits for restauranteurs: from freeing staff up to focus on customer service to creating a better dining experience that increases loyalty to improving table turnover time - leading to higher revenues."

Dine & Dash is being trialled at the St Martins Lane Avenue Prezzo restaurant in Central London on 13 March. Anybody wanting to try out the technology for themselves, can sign up on a first-come, first-served basis at https://tinyurl.com/dinedashevent.

Coincidentally, diners at Pizza Hut will be able to enjoy a similar experience with the roll out of Mastercard’s Qkr! with Masterpass into its UK restaurants from March 19th.

Qkr! is a mobile ordering and payments platform developed by Mastercard Labs that enables consumers to order, pay and split bills from their smart phone without having to queue or wait for a server.

Pizza Hut joins a host of UK pubs and restaurants using the technology, including wagamama, ASK Italian, Young’s Pubs, Zizzi, Byron, Bird, and gastropub chain New World Trading.