Pingit hopes to monetise your phone number, just as PayPal managed with your email address Running for the last few months in the United Kingdom, Barclays mobile phone payment system ‘Pingit’ is gaining traction in the market. It’s one of the first systems to hit the UK smartphone market, and that first mover advantage in the UK is being pushed home with an extensive television marketing campaign.

Running on iOS Android, or Blackberry smartphones, the application allows you to send money from a bank account tied to your phone number by the application to someone else using their mobile phone number. Initially limited to Barclays Bank customers at launch, the service is now open to all UK bank account holders, and users the Faster Payments System to ensure same day transfer times.

The benefit of Barclays doing this is clear – where PayPal monetised your email address, nobody has yet managed to fully monetise a mobile phone number in the same way. The system itself eschews extra technology such as chip and pin card readers or NFC hardware, but relies on something everyone has in their possession.

If Barclays can make this work, and get it established while other systems are tied up in the courts, they’ll have played a blinder in establishing the de facto system in the UK. Watch Pingit carefully.