Metro Bank today introduced Pay Anyone, a new free feature of its online bill pay service that enables people to send personal payments to anyone with a U.S. bank account just by using the recipient's e-mail or cell phone number.
Payments are sent directly from the sender's bank account to the recipient's bank account - regardless of his or her financial institution - and can be deposited in as fast as one business day.
"Pay Anyone allows customers to send payments to friends, family members or anyone at all, electronically and directly, in as fast as one business day," said Metro Bank Chairman, President and CEO Gary L. Nalbandian. "Confirmation of payment, along with a customizable message from the sender, is sent to the recipient by e-mail or text message. To our knowledge, no other bank offers this service in our market area with payment as fast as next day."
Ways to use Metro Bank's Pay Anyone service include quickly and easily sending money to children in college, collecting money for group gifts, splitting the bill for dinner or paying the babysitter.
In addition to Pay Anyone, Metro Bank's online banking service enables customers to: instantly access their account information; transfer funds between Metro accounts; view 18 months of electronic account statements and bill-pay history; apply for a loan and more.
Forty percent of Metro Bank customers are enrolled in online banking. In addition to managing accounts in real-time, Metro's online banking customers used free bill pay to pay nearly 730,000 bills in the first ten months of 2010.
In October, customers' bill payments totaled more than $21 million, with each active bill pay user sending an average of seven payments.