Some Marks and Spencer customers have told the BBC of cases where the chain's contactless payment terminals have taken money from cards other than the ones intended for payment.

Card are supposed to be within about 4cm of the front of the contactless terminal to work.

The system uses something called Near Field Communication to identify a card and take payment.
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She looked at the receipt and compared it to my card and realised that the numbers didn't tally”

Rosemary Marks and Spencer customer

Rosemary, from Sussex, got a shock when she tried to pay by chip-and-pin at her local store.

She believes her contactless Smile card was much more than 4cm away from the terminal when she visited Marks and Spencer in Chichester in April and tried to pay with her regular Lloyds debit card.

She told BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme: " I put my card into the reader and the assistant was asking whether or not I wanted cash back.

"Before I could answer, the transaction came up as complete and the till issued a receipt so I hadn't put in a Pin at all at that stage. I queried it with an assistant and she looked rather puzzled and looked at the receipt and compared it to my card and realised that the numbers didn't tally."

Rosemary recognised that the four digits on the till receipt belonged to a Smile card she had in her purse, which she was holding in her other hand.

She had not realised until then that this card was able to make contactless payments.

Even when she realised it could, she thought her purse was about a foot away from the terminal when the payment was taken.