While contactless credit cards have been available since 2008, when Barclaycard first released them, the actual usage of the cards has been very low. In fact, recent studies have found that of all the people that have contactless cards in their wallets, only a quarter have actually used them. That equates to around 5 percent of the UK population having actually used contactless payment. That's a  low figure in anyone's book - especially for a technology that's been around for more four years.