UK NFC Payments Live Courtesy of Orange and Barclaycard

Orange UK has launched a new service called Quick Tap which, in partnership with Barclaycard, allows you to make contactless NFC payments by touching your phone, with a special SIM card inside, to a contactless reader in a shop. 

While the service is currently only available on Samsung Tocco Lite Bada-powered phones and it only allows for a maximum of £15 ($25 US) for each transaction, other phones will be added to the service soon. 

Google Android already supports NFC (near-field communication) as of the Gingerbread version but smartphones operating on the mobile platform don't come out with NFC-chips as a standard just yet. As the technology evolves and the offering becomes more popular we'll see NFC chips being included stock on Google-powered smartphones -- and we're positive Windows Phones will also support NFC if there's a market demand.