The take-up rate of contactless cards has started to slow after strong growth in 2012 and the first half of 2013, according to a new survey.Researcher RFi found that the proportion of consumers who knew that they had a contactless payment card increased from 46 per cent to 66 per cent over the 12 months to March. The proportion of people who made a contactless payment over the period rose from 31 per cent to 47 per cent.But RFi Australia's managing director advisory, Alan Shields, said the growth in the "activation rate" (the proportion of consumers who are aware they have a contactless card and who then start to use it) had slowed down.Shields said that in the 12 months to March 2013, the activation rate increased from 48 per cent to 67 per cent but in the 12 months to March this year the rate only increased from 67 per cent to 72 per cent."The activation rate looks as if it is peaking. The industry has to move to the next stage of development to encourage more people to start using contactless," Shields said.He said there were several barriers that the industry had to address. One-third of people who don't use contactless worry about its reliability and 22 per cent say there are not enough point of sale terminals available to them.HP commissioned RFi to research consumer payment trends. It found that the adoption of contactless by Coles and Woolworths was a "defining moment" for the payment technology. Contactless penetration in supermarkets is very high, with 78 per cent of contactless users saying they use the payment technology for supermarket purchases.After that the penetration rate falls away sharply: 42 per cent for petrol, 31 per cent for liquor stores, 28 per cent for takeaway food, 26 per cent for other retailers and 17 per cent for cafes.Shields said rollout of more contactless point of sale terminals would help maintain momentum. He estimated that there were about 250,000 contactless terminals in service now, out of a total point of sale fleet of 800,000 terminals.He said a challenge for the payments industry was to encourage daily usage of contactless. Currently 38 per cent of contactless users use the payment system at least a few times a week, compared with 36 per cent in September.Shields said contactless might experience a growth spurt from August, when card scheme operators will require consumers to use a PIN instead of a signature for payments.