Paym sees over one million users and £6.5 million spend in first 100 days

More than one million people have registered with their bank or building society for Paym, the UK bank-backed mobile number payment service that was launched in late April.

6 comments

Paym sees over one million users and £6.5 million spend in first 100 days

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

Customers of Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Cumberland Building Society, Danske Bank, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Santander and TSB have been able to send and receive Paym payments since 29 April 2014. During this time just over £6.5 million has been sent using the service.

Later this year Paym will expand further becoming available to more than nine out of ten current account holders.

Jemma Smith, director of communications & education at the Payments Council says: "It's hugely encouraging that one million people have chosen to register for Paym already, but this milestone only marks the start of growth in the service."

She points to recent research among 2000 adults by TNS which highlights an increase in consumer awareness and confidence in mobile payments services. Figures indicate that the awareness of mobile payment services amongst consumers increased from 45% before the launch of Paym up to 75% just a week after the service became available. Of those already using Paym, 65% are confident in its ability to be a safe and secure way to transfer money to family and friends.

"I think that securely paying back friends and family using just their mobile number will become second nature - and we'll wonder why we ever did anything else," says Smith. "The next big step forward is more banks and building societies joining before the end of the year, and as a result we look forward to millions more people signing up and using the service."

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Comments: (6)

A Finextra member 

Million users is encouraging. Is spend £65m (heading) or £6.5m (article)? 

Paul Penrose

Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

Ooops! Headline typo corrected, wrists (my own) slapped.

Dean Wallace

Dean Wallace Director of Consumer Payments Modernisation at ACI

That's a lot. Factoring in a spike for novelty, a dip for the fact not all FIs are on board yet, this really does seem strong. My bank doesn't offer yet, but have heard some banks done a great job of making the journey simple, others have completely messed it up. As other other FIs come on board, and consumers become happier using their phones, the logical next question is "why can't I do this in a store?"

Of course, those bad journey offending banks will slow things down a tad. I guess PayM didn't mandate certain rules on how the journey should work. 

A Finextra member 

A fantastic result for PayM and something the outgoing Adrian Kamellard can be pleased to have ushered into life successfully under his watch. As one of the first big initatives driven by the payments council and clearly aimed at the peer to peer market it represents a big step forward for multi-bank-led innovation in payments.

Congratulations must also go to Cumberland Building Society, the tenth largest building society in the UK for boldly racing ahead of its larger peers to participate. This also shows that building societies can now offer just as many convenient features as banks competing credibly for consumer business on current accounts not just savings and mortgages.

Given the fact that PayM is activated from within the mobile banking app, it has the added advantage for participating FIs of making continual brand impressions with retail customers and having a valued presence on the customer's smartphone.   Competition to have a presence in the customer's wallet is no longer the key to trust and loyalty but a presence on a smartphone and a role in informal, cash-equivalent transactions such as splitting a bill or paying for an item are new places for FIs to feature and compete for mindshare with challengers like PayPal and the raft of mobile wallets appearing now.

Raymond Lee

Raymond Lee Sales Manager at PHOS

Call me cynical but is it really a great result? It's £65,000 day on average. How many people have used it more than once and how many have used it to send money to more than one person.. and can they extract the Pingit related transaction? That would be for more informative. 

Dean Wallace

Dean Wallace Director of Consumer Payments Modernisation at ACI

Lee - I don't think that's cynical, it's clinical :-). The 65k average is unlikely to be be the real average. Consider the usual adoption curve. This would have a big uptick to start with, dip, then gradually increase to eventually exceed the initial hit rate. Correlate that with the amount of consumers able to use on day 1 vs end if this year (more banks on board) vs sometime next year (even more banks on board) and you can see why today's results are encouraging. I agree, it would be nice to see stats such as velocity of use and average transaction sizes. Ooh, just imagine the data possibilities :-)

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