A new report from Berg Insight shows that global sales of handsets equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology grew by 300% last year to 140 million units.

Annual device shipments are expected to reach 1 billion by 2017; a compound annual growth rate of 48.2%.

Visa Europe says the adoption of NFC contactless payments has reached a ‘critical point’ across Europe.

More than 19 million transactions took place in March 2013, driving the total spend on contactless cards and smartphones equipped with a Visa payWave app to over €1 billion (£856 million).

Visa and Samsung have announced a partnership that combines Visa’s expertise in payments with Samsung’s mobile technology.

It’ll enable financial institutions to download payment account information to NFC-enabled Samsung devices via the Visa Mobile Provisioning Service.