The UK Payments Council has delayed the launch of its mobile payments project from 2013 to spring 2014. This would appear to be the price of getting the major banks involved in the new service. It has secured commitments from financial institutions representing 90 per cent of current accounts in the UK, with Barclays, Cumberland Building Society, Danske Bank, HSBC Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, Metro Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander all onboard. Discussions are continuing for more institutions to join.

The service will enable secure payments to be made directly to or from an account without the need to disclose the sort code and account number, by simply using a mobile phone number as a proxy. It is pitched as the first service with the potential to link up every bank account in the country with a mobile number. Adrian Kamellard, chief executive at the Payments Council, says: “The mobile payments project is a fantastic example of the unique role the Payments Council can play in delivering far-reaching, innovative improvements for customers. This new service will offer a simple, secure way to split a bill for dinner, receive money from a friend or pay a tradesman without needing to remember or share account details.”

Shortly before launch, participating financial institutions will invite customers to register via their online banking service, mobile app or other approved method to provide their mobile phone number and confirm which account they want to link it to. The service will move money directly between accounts using the Faster Payments service, which processed more than 800 million online and phone banking payments in 2012, and the LINK network, which processed 3.1 billion real-time ATM transactions last year.

Over the next year, the Payments Council will continue the work needed to set rules defining minimum service standards for security, speed and other technical requirements. This includes end-to-end testing, preparing and implementing the pre-launch registration campaign and speaking with other interested financial institutions to ensure the service is made available to the highest possible number of customers.

This final phase of the project follows the completion in December 2012 of the central database that enables banks to securely store their customers’ mobile phone numbers and link them to their account details. The Payments Council says it will continue to test and enhance the capacity of the central database and work with the participating financial institutions to ensure the operation of the service is as easy as possible for customers.

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