Visa Europe said 30.3 million Visa contactless cards are now in circulation in the U.K. and that 293,600 contactless terminals have been installed in the country.

The card scheme said Visa contactless card transactions increased fourfold year-on-year in the U.K. in the 12 months to Sept. 30, to £461.6 million ($765.22 million) from £96.7 million ($160.30 million). Overall spending with U.K. Visa credit, debit, commercial and prepaid cards increased by 9.2 percent year-on-year to £445 billion ($737.70 billion) in the year to Sept. 30.

Visa Europe said 4,000 U.K. retailers have signed up to offer its V.me by Visa digital wallet, which is already available from the Nationwide Building Society. Additional U.K. banks are due to launch V.me in early 2014. Apart from the U.K., V.me is also available in France, Poland and Spain.

In March 2013, Royal Bank of Scotland and its NatWest subsidiary made the Visa Personal Payments service available in their mobile banking app to their U.K. customers. Allowing P2P payments, the service enables anyone with a Visa card to send payments to another Visa cardholder via smartphone without the need to share account details. More than 3.1 million NatWest customers have downloaded the updated mobile banking app as of January 2014, Visa Europe said.

"This early mobile payment success, the growth of contactless and the rollout of V.me by Visa signifies that Visa Europe is on track to realize its prediction that 50 percent of Visa transactions will made be made through a mobile device by 2020," Visa Europe said in a statement.

In Europe, contactless payments are now available in twice as many countries as in January 2013, while European contactless transactions have nearly tripled and terminals almost doubled, Visa Europe said. In addition, 62 mobile contactless projects are now live or planned to launch across Europe, it added.

Learn more about contactless/NFC.