Tag: barclays mobile payments

UK companies will soon receive m-payments platform which sends payments instantly via Pingit or Paym.

British multinational banking and financial service company, Barclays, has teamed up with digital banking solutions provider, Bottomline Technologies, to offer UK businesses an instant mobile payments platform that will enable businesses to send payments fast and directly to customers via their mobile phone number. The platform is Bottomline Technologies’ C-Series payments processing module and will enable payments to be sent through Barclays’ Pingit mobile app or the Barclays-supported Paym mobile payment platform.

The transactions can be made without requiring the bank account details of consumers.

The businesses that use the service – companies ranging from utilities to insurers – will be able to make instant mobile payments, which also includes refunds, directly to consumers with just their phone numbers. No bank account details are needed.

With the service, consumers can make payments nearly immediately via their mobile phone, whether it’s to pay a gas bill or for travel fares. On the flip side, businesses can pay their customers without having to handle the sensitive bank account details, reported The Financial Times.

To use the instant mobile payments service, consumers and companies must be registered with Paym or Pignit.

In order to use the service, consumers and companies must be registered with either Paym or Pingit. That said, recipients who want to receive a payment through their phone number do not have to bank with Barclays, nor do they need to have a smartphone to use Pignit.

Furthermore, according to Bottomline, “If a recipient wants to receive a payment via their phone number but is not registered to either service, they will receive an SMS inviting them to register to Pingit within five days.”

That said, for businesses, the service does require a Barclays Corporate UK bank account.

Combined, both Pignit and Paym cover more than five million accounts in the UK. Bottomline stated that “There are already over 3 million phone numbers registered with Pingit and over 3 million registered with Paym.”

Pingit managing director, Darren Foulds, commented on the instant mobile payments platform saying that it is a payment solution that will offer additional security as well as faster speed and convenience for companies and their customers.

The financial institution has recently released an update for its Android application which supports NFC technology.

Barclays recently updated its Android mobile payments app in order to allow it to be able to complete contactless transactions through the use of NFC technology, for those whose devices support that tech.

This service will be available to customers with both the Barclaycard credit card and its mobile app.

This same mobile payments service update will not apply to the Barclays Mobile Banking app. The new service supporting near field communication (NFC technology) will make it possible for consumers to make purchases of up to £30 at participating locations. These contactless transactions are made without needing to enter a PIN or even having to open the mobile app. When Apple Pay launched in the United Kingdom, Barclays did not support the service and became the target of considerable criticism.

This launch of its own NFC based mobile payments service helps to explain the move from Barclays.

It appears as though the financial institution is working on taking its own solid stance when it comes to supporting smartphone based transactions. It will be interesting to see how things play out when Google brings Android Pay to the United Kingdom, as that service – which also uses NFC technology – has not yet been rolled out in the country. So far, many in the industry believe it will take Google more time before it will be ready for that launch.

Through the use of the updated Barclaycard mobile app, all users need to do to take advantage of the service is to enable the NFC technology on their smartphones. When it comes time to pay for a purchase at a point of sale counter with a contactless reader, users need only tap their devices against the reader to complete the transaction.

The mobile payments app operates in the background. This is meant to make the process much simpler for consumers because they will neither need to launch the app nor enter a PIN in order to make a small purchase. Certain retailers will allow larger purchases, as high as £100, to be completed without the use of a PIN.