Around half (48 percent) of UK small businesses are using smartphones to connect to the internet for business and payment purposes, with a further 9 percent planning to adopt the technology by the end of 2010, a recent research points out.

According to the Quarterly Survey of Small Business in Britain conducted by The Open University Business School, UK financial services provider Barclays and accountancy body ACCA, around 65 percent of small business owners have already adopted smartphone mobile technology; this has contributed a the surge in the adoption of web-based smartphones by the small business sector and has accelerated the trend towards a cashless society.

"Businesses are motivated by the ease, decreasing costs and the exceptional increase in power we're seeing in handsets," Steve Cooper, Managing Director of Barclays Business, has declared in an attempt to explain the significant adoption rate of smartphone-based technology among smal businesses in the UK.

The significant development potential displayed by the smartphone in the mobile payments landscape is also recognized among major industry players such as Visa. The company is reportedly in talks with Wells Fargo and other financial services providers to launch pilot programs in the near future that will allow users to pay for purchases in stores using their smartphone devices.