Launched in February, Barclays Pingit was the U.K.’s first P2P payment service letting bank customers send and receive funds using only a mobile phone number. When it was launched, the program was only available to Barclays bank customers, but Barclays has now made the Pingit service available to customers of all U.K. banks and building societies.

"Barclays Pingit is proving to be more popular than even we were expecting," said Antony Jenkins, chief executive for Barclays' retail and business banking, "and from today the customers of all UK banks and building societies can also benefit. The ability to make simple payments to whoever they want, wherever they are, instantly and securely, is making many people’s lives much easier."

Jenkins called Barclays Pingit potentially a revolution in banking and promised additional functionality for the service in the next few months. 

To use the service, users link their accounts with their mobile phone number. That enables payments to be sent directly to their account using the Faster Payments Scheme, an interbank money transfer system used by U.K. banks. Non-Barclays customers will have a mobile "wallet" established for them to use the service to send and receive funds.

Available at no cost to users, Barclays Pingit has been downloaded more than 400,000 times in its first eight weeks, Barclays said. It was the number-one financial app in the U.K. Apple App Store in February.

The bank said the service is popular with small businesses and eBay users who have started accepting payments with Barclays Pingit to avoid the higher costs, inconvenience or funding delays of accepting credit cards, checks or other online transfer services.

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