Westpac will update its mobile banking application in the New Year to allow customers to load Westpac credit and debit cards into an Android smartphone app. And those customers with a Galaxy or Note 3 smartphone will be able to just tap their phone against a contactless payment terminal to make a payment.The application relies on the use of Near Field Communications chips which are embedded in the smartphones.Westpac began a trial to allow customers with a debit MasterCard to turn their Android smartphones into contactless payments devices in August 2012. At that time, it partnered with Optus and Oberthur Technologies, and stored the data held on an EMV debit card on the secure element of the phone's SIM card.The problem with this approach was it required telecommunications companies to provide access to their phone SIM cards.In June, Oberthur announced that its NFC-embedded secure element - which can be used to securely store EMV data - had been embedded into the Samsung Galaxy 4 phone and had been certified by Visa, MasterCard and Google. It is this technology which underpins Westpac's plans, according to David Lindberg, Westpac's chief product officer. The release of Westpac's new application is also dependent on the final roll out of Google's latest release of the Android operating system known as KitKat. Once this is widely available the Westpac system can go live and is slated for early 2014, according to Lindberg.Yesterday, Westpac announced it had partnered with Visa to develop the new service, although the solution will work for both Visa payWave cards and MasterCard PayPass cards.It will, however, only work for people with NFC-enabled Android phones featuring the Oberthur-embedded secure element. Apple has steadfastly refused to release an NFC-enabled iPhone.According to Lindberg, Westpac has, for the present, ruled out offering an NFC-enabled case or sticker that would allow iPhone users to make contactless payments, although, he said, the bank looked forward to working with Apple in the future.In the past, while mobile banking apps have been used widely to check balances or make payments, the only way to use the phone as a contactless payments device has been to either buy a smartphone case featuring an NFC chip or affix an NFC sticker to the outside of a phone.This was the approach taken by Commonwealth Bank, although, in October, it also announced that it would be integrating its payments app with the NFC chips in certain Android phones. It has yet to announce which phones, or when the service will go live. Like Westpac, CBA has to wait for the latest version of Android to go live before it can launch its service.Australians' appetite for contactless payments is clear - three in five Australians have a contactless payment card according to the HP-RFi Australian Payments Research report. Lindberg claims that 55 per cent of debit card purchases are now contactless, but enthusiasm for the mobile phone as a payments device has been at a slower burn.The lack of complete integration may explain why, although 68