Contactless payments are gathering pace as a payments option, at least in the niche merchant segment that is the taxi industry.Cabcharge yesterday provided an overview of the use of contactless bank payments card (as well as its own proprietary cards). At Cabcharge:-- There have been two million contactless transactions since the introduction of this payment option more than two years ago.-- There have been 500,000 contactless payments for each of MasterCard and Visa cards since January 2012.-- Twenty per cent of scheme-branded payments are now contactless. At weekends this percentage rises to 25 per cent, at least on Visa-branded cards.-- The firm has 20,000 contactless terminals in use in taxis affiliated to its networks.More merchants are getting behind contactless payments, with Coles now reaching the end of its terminal rollout. MasterCard put the number of contactless terminals now in Australia at more than 100,000.Overall payments turnover of Cabcharge's network is also picking up. Cabcharge said turnover on taxi payments increased 1.7 per cent over the year to June 2012, to A$1.07 billion. The share of payments on the firm's own card brand increased 3.5 per cent, to $435 million.This latter trend helped improve the yield earned on payments turnover, which increased by 2.6 per cent, to $89.6 million.