Mobile cash system 'this year'

An industry-wide scheme to make sending cash via mobile phone as easy as
texting will be in place this year, the UK payments body has said.

 Customers who register for the service will have their mobile numbers and
account numbers linked on a central database and the initiative will be
available to banks and building societies before the end of 2012, the
Payments Council said.

 The service can be used by any smartphone with an internet connection on
any network and is intended as a base for banks to build their own
competitive services.

 Huge leaps in mobile payment technology are set to take hold this year,
with Barclays last week unveiling a free app enabling people to send and
receive money by using mobile phone numbers.

 Barclays plans to make the Pingit app available to all UK adults from next
month, regardless of which bank or building society they use.

 Richard Martin, head of innovation at the Payments Council, described
mobile payments as a "rapidly developing marketplace" with "limitless"
possibilities.

 He said he expected the Payments Council's scheme would "co-exist"
alongside a number of innovations.

 Mr Martin said: "What we're doing is offering a common infrastructure that
any institution can plug into. Our role will be to set out some minimum
security requirements."

 Mr Martin said the body had considered how the payments might be used, for
instance paying a friend or relative or a sole trader such as a plumber or
window cleaner, all cases in which cash or a cheque might traditionally
have been used.

 "Our proposition is giving consumers the option of simply and quickly
firing off an electronic payment," he said.

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