Barclays Pingit, the UK’s first person-to-person service for sending and receiving money using mobile phone numbers, is now available to the customers of all UK banks and building societies.
The ground-breaking service, launched in February, is free to use and allows users to send and receive money simply using a mobile number, without the need to share bank details. The service is available to over 16s who have a UK current account and UK mobile phone number.
Barclays Pingit has been downloaded over 400,000 times in its first eight weeks and it was the number one financial app in the UK Apple App Store in February. The service is also proving popular with small businesses and eBay users, with many starting to accept payments by Barclays Pingit as an alternative to cash, cards, cheques and online transfers.
Now that the service is fully available to Barclays and non-Barclays customers, a range of additional uses for Barclays Pingit are planned for consumers and businesses in the coming months, as well as new features including joint account registrations and further business functionality. In response to strong customer demand, the service was expanded to 16 and 17 year olds with a current account at the end of February.
Antony Jenkins, Chief Executive, Retail and Business Banking, Barclays: “Barclays Pingit is proving to be more popular than even we were expecting and from today the customers of all UK banks and building societies can also benefit. The ability to make simple payments to whoever they want, wherever they are, instantly and securely, is making many people’s lives much easier.
Additional service information:
- Numbers correct as at 12 April 2012.
- Barclays Pingit links the user’s current account with their mobile phone number, enabling payments to be sent directly to that account via the Faster Payments Scheme. For non-customers using the Pingit app, Barclays will set up a “wallet” account and payments will be made to and from that.
- The app is protected by a five-digit passcode, set by the user.
- Senders and recipients will be notified about sent, received, pending and cancelled payments with an SMS from Barclays.
- Users must be registered to receive payments into their account, but will receive text message notifying them of the pending payments if they are not registered. If they register within 24 hours the payment will be applied to their account. The instruction will be cancelled if the recipient has not registered in that time.
- Normal transaction charges may apply for business customer. Only sole beneficiary accounts are eligible at present.
- The Barclays Pingit app works with Android 2.2 and above, iOS 4.2 and above, Blackberry OS 5.0 and above. Users must download and register via the app to be able to send payments.
- Alternative registration via the website at www.barclays.co.uk/pingit allows customers to register to receive payments.
