I have just received a new contactless Postfinance card, does any one know whether it can be used as a contactless card outside of Switzerland.

The Post Finance card is NOT used with Chip and Pin outside Switzerland is it? Why do you think contactless cards will be operating abroad?

Was kind of hoping technology might have moved things on a bit.

It's never been a matter of technology i think, the postfinance card is the equivalent of the bancomat card (or maestro card) that you can find also in italy and are for POS payment in your own country and bancomat withdrawal everywhere, also works for online payment, they are debit cards. Italian ones don't work abroad for POS payments, swiss cards don't work abroad, i don't know maybe applies everywhere or it is changed in the meanwhile (internal EU might work). The upside is that they're free and come with your account, if you don't need a credit card you can save the money.
You can get a basic CREDIT card with contactless from postfinance, it's not very expensive. Also you can get it in euros or pay 0.9% tax for the value conversion but they give back 0.5% of expenses so you end up paying 0.4%, not a bad deal.

I used my contactless credit card in Australia with no problems. It was a Liberty card though not Post