DATA released by Barclaycard shows supermarket shoppers are increasingly turning to ‘touch and go’ as their payment method of choice when making purchases up to the value of £30.

With all major supermarkets now accepting contactless following the roll-out by Sainsbury’s late last year, groceries bought through ‘touch and go’ technology have risen 136 per cent by value and 114 per cent by volume in the last 12 months.

Shoppers make higher value purchases with their contactless cards and devices and also use them more frequently.

The residents of Brighton are taking to ‘touch and go’ in their droves with the area’s spending seeing the payments technology increasing by 103 per cent in the last year.

The news comes as industry body the UK Cards Association revealed that overall contactless payments accounted for £25 billion of spending in 2016, up from £7.75 billion in 2015.

This is supported by Barclaycard data which shows that spending across all categories rose 166 per cent during the same period.

Saving approximately seven seconds per transaction compared to Chip and PIN, busy shoppers now favour ‘touch and go’ with 55 per cent of all eligible electronic transactions - those up to £30 - now made using this payments technology.

While contactless is surging in popularity among all age groups, for the second year running it’s the nation’s silver spenders’ – those aged over 60 – where adoption is climbing at the fastest rate.

Among this group the number of users has surged 64 per cent in the last 12 months alone while in comparison – as the number of users among all other age groups is already relatively high – the rate of growth is slower.

Other sectors to have seen a steep year-on-year rise in ‘touch and go’ spending are service stations (218 per cent) and department stores (147 per cent).