The UK Payments Council announced that within the first 100 days of operation, Paym the nationally backed mobile payment service has recorded spend of approximately £6.5 million ($11 million) and seen membership reach more than 1 million individuals.
Customers of the Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Cumberland Building Society, Danske Bank, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Santander and TSB are all currently eligible to participate in Paym (with remaining financial institutions expected to be added to the list of participants in the near future), which effectively amounts to a national person-to-person (P2P) mobile payment service
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According to research by TNS, awareness of mobile payment services amongst consumers increased from 45% before the launch of Paym in April 2014 up to 75% just a week after the service became available. As a result, other mobile payment services in the UK are greatly benefitting from the additional exposure created by Paym. Security threats to Paym don’t appear to be top of mind, with 65% consumers telling TNS that they are confident in its ability to be a safe and secure way to transfer money to family and friends.
“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. I think that securely paying back friends and family using just their mobile will become second nature and we’ll wonder why we ever did anything else,” said Jemma Smith, Director of Communications & Education at the Payments Council . “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.”
While independent players will take solace in the fact that mobile payment volumes are growing in the UK, the success of Paym is somewhat of a Catch-22 given that the more consumers rely and trust their primary financial institutions to provide mobile payment services, it will be more difficult to get them to switch third party mobile payment services or and or wallets. Nonetheless, the initial success of Paym highlights the growing interest in mobile payments in the UK.
Overview by Tristan Hugo-Webb, Associate Director, International Advisory Services
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