Barclays announces mobile payments to India through Pingit service

Barclays reveals the launch of a new function allowing mobile payments to India through its Pingit mobile payments service in the UK, opening it up to the largest remittance market between the UK and another country.

The app will allow users in the UK to send quick and easy payments using just a mobile number to friends, family or contacts in India. This is a first as neither senders nor recipients need to be Barclays customers.

The Indian market is the market with the highest volume of remittance from the UK, worth over £2.5billion. The latest function has been designed with the strong heritage between the UK and India in mind. There are 1.5 million British Indians and 1 million students and visitors who currently live in the UK, many of whom regularly send international payments to loved ones and contacts in India.

Barclays Pingit users in the UK will simply send a payment using the mobile phone number of the intended recipient in India – there’s no need for the sender to obtain swift codes, sort codes or account numbers of the recipient. Recipients will then receive a registration notification for the first time, or once registered an alert to confirm payment has been made.

There is a minimum transaction of £25 and a maximum of £1,500 and payments can take up to 48 hours.

Ashok Vaswani, Barclays CEO for Personal and Corporate Banking said: “Pingit payments to India is a huge step for the international mobile payments market. Our goal is that no-one is left behind in the current digital revolution, and this launch demonstrates continued innovation by Barclays to meet the needs of UK consumers. It also marks an important step for future Pingit development and opportunities internationally.”

Barclays Pingit is available to both customers and non-customers and can be used by anyone with a mobile phone number in the UK. Since launch in February 2012, the free app has over 3m downloads and over £600m has been sent through the service.