Barclays has just made it easier for large businesses to pay individual customers in the UK via its mobile payment service Pingit.
The bank announced today that it has added a feature to let large firms including insurance and utility companies, as well as retailers, send payments by simply using the person’s mobile phone number.
The Pingit app itself is nothing new, having launched in Febraury 2012 as a service that allowed users to send money to friends, family or anyone else that’s registered as a UK resident and has a UK bank account — and what’s more, it’s not restricted to Barclays account holders.
How Pingit’s latest feature works: Large businesses can use Barclays’ existing File Gateway channel to send electronic payments directly into an individual’s Barclays Pingit account. Payments can reach any UK mobile phone number, regardless of whether they have already registered as a user on Pingit. Non-registered users will be notified by text message with details of how to register to receive payment.
The CEGA Group, which facilitates global claims and travel risk management, has already signed on for Pingit to make use of this new feature.
“It offers our customers a faster alternative to BACS payments, minimizes the need to share personal information and satisfies the increasing desire to interact by mobile phone,” CEGA financial director Warwick Hoddy notes.
Barclays hasn’t been resting on its laurels as it seeks to position Pingit as a competitor against other payment processors (large and small alike) such as PayPal and Stripe, looking to win over businesses to become yet another defacto payment method. However, its reputation of being an established multinational bank will likely help in its favor — and in this case, it is making full use of its relationship with large companies to migrate them to Pingit.
Headline image via Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images
Read more : Barclays Pingit app now lets large firms pay individual customers using just a mobile number
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.