Paym launch will allow 40m UK current account holders to send payments by mobile phone

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This Is Money Reporter

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Mobile phone owners will soon be able to send cash to any bank account in the country using just a phone number, the Payments Council has announced.

The new secure payments service called Paym (or ‘pay ‘em’) will be integrated into existing mobile banking apps and allow anyone to transfer money without asking for an account number or sort code.

The only information consumers will need to know is the recipients phone number. Paym

will be available to 40million current account holders by the end of

the year, according to the Payments Council, and is due to launch this

spring.

Paym: 40 million account holders expected to transfer cash by text in 2014

To start with, customers of Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Cumberland Building Society, Danske Bank, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Santander and TSB Bank will be able to use the service, meaning it will initially be available to 30 million people.

The service will expand its reach later in 2014 by an extra 10 million when Clydesdale Bank, first direct, Isle of Man Bank, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Yorkshire Bank customers come on board. By this point, Paym will be available on more than nine out of 10 current accounts.

Nationwide Building Society has also confirmed its intention to join in early 2015, while Metro Bank and Ulster Bank are finalising launch plans.

The Payments Council said the UK is one of the first countries in the world to unveil such a cross-industry scheme but some countries, like Sweden, have similar services in place.

It predicts that the number of payments made through Paym will have reached around one billion by the end of 2018, taking into account factors like levels of mobile phone ownership and payment patterns.

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Although most people are expected to use Paym to make small payments, like reimbursing family or friends for meals or cinema tickets, they will be able to transfer at least £250 a day under the scheme.

Caps above this amount will be decided by individual banks and building societies.

Adrian Kamellard, chief executive of the Payments Council, said: ‘As more and more services become available via mobile phones, it makes sense that there is plenty of demand to improve the way we can use them to pay.

‘Paym will enable millions of people to pay securely using just a mobile number from spring this year. In a world where many of us are inseparable from our phones, it’s readily believable that more than one billion of these payments could be made in the next five years.’

To make a payment, you can either select the contact you wish to pay from your phone or key in their mobile number. The app will ask you to confirm the name of the recipient and the amount before the money is sent.

A payment made through Paym will travel as quickly as transferring money online from a current account.

Barclays’ Pingit app, which launched just before the 2012 Olympic Games, has picked up 2.5 million regular users in the last 18 months alone.

Pingit, which is available to both Barclays and non-Barclays customers, also allows people to make payments using just mobile phone numbers.

Another mobile payments scheme, called Zapp, is set for launch this autumn, which among its uses will enable people to pay bills sent through the post by scanning a code into their handset.

Zapp is a subsidiary of payments provider VocaLink, the company behind Link cash machines.

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Comments (4)

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Wayne L.,

West Sussex.,

54 minutes ago

Errr not for me.

The Don,

Deal, United Kingdom,

1 hour ago

Think I’ll wait a couple of years until it has been thoroughly tested by the guinea pigs and the holes in the security have been plugged.

the truth,

wrexham, United Kingdom,

1 hour ago

after what we heard from snowden , not a chance

IC,

Watford,

2 hours ago

Potentially very dangerous and very stupid given the society we live. We are running before we can walk as far as this type of technology is concerned.

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Paym launch will allow 40m UK current account holders to send payments by mobile phone