Paying by mobile reaches the UK

Rather than handing over a credit card at the end of their meal, diners at the fashionable west London restaurant Circus can now pick up the bill by giving the waiter their mobile phone number.

Using a mobile phone to pay for goods and services is already possible in parts of Europe but so far British mobile phone users have been restricted to using their phone number to buy ringtones or goods over the internet.

Circus is the first British restaurant to allow so called m-commerce, through a deal with Paybox, the German payments company backed by Deutsche Bank.

Russell Norman, general manager of Circus, reckons his clientele are exactly the sort of people likely to be early users of the new technology but he is not just interested in increasing his business. "Paybox was also attractive to me because it is fun and funky. It's about being at the cutting edge of something that could be very important."

Analysts predict that within 10 years a third of all mobile users will have bought goods by using their phone as a credit card and there are a number of competing payment technologies already being trialled in Europe.

But while other mobile phone payment systems need a caller to set up a separate debit account, or can only be used by customers that pay their phone bills through a monthly contract, Paybox takes cash directly from a caller's bank account.