The pilot trial will enable customers to take a photo of the cheque using their mobile phone camera, eliminating the need to go into a branch or physically send on a paper version. Funds, up to a maximum of £2500, are cleared the same day.

The initial test phase is expected to run for several weeks to identify the needs of different customers with a view to expanding the service in 2015, says the bank.

Barclays has been piloting mobile deposit technology with a few thousand customers since June, when the UK government decided to push ahead with legislation that lets banks and building societies process cheque images - rather than the physical paper - for the first time. Last week it announced that it would expand the service to one million customers over the coming month.

A pilot is also in the pipeline for corporate customers, which between them still put through around 46 million cheques each year, with a value in excess of £100 billion, says Barclays.

According to new figures from the Cheque and Credit Clearing Company, 64% of the UK's commercial businesses wrote out 293 million cheques in 2013.

Separately, Lloyds has teamed up with business support network Smarta Enterprises, to launch a new digital service for SME customers to help entrepreneurs start, manage and grow their business effectively via an online Business ToolBox.

The site offers unrestricted access to nine online tools to help manage all aspects of day-to-day business activities, from accounting and receipt management to digital tools for building websites, online data backup and a credit-checking facility.