The integration with Pingit and Paym paves the way for Bottomline corporate customers to reduce their reliance on cheques for disbursing payments of up to £3000 to individuals and other businesses in the corporate supply chain.

There are already over three million phone numbers registered with Pingit and over three million registered with Paym. If a recipient wants to receive a payment via their phone number but is not registered to either service, they will receive an SMS inviting them to register and on doing so will instantly receive the payment.

Recipients do not have to bank with Barclays or have a smartphone to use Pingit and according to Payments UK, more than 40 million customers are eligible to register their mobile phone number for Paym, representing over 90% of UK current accounts.

Richard Ransom, product marketing manager, Bottomline Technologies, comments: “With the ability to make a single submission of bulk payments in near real-time without needing to capture customer bank details, we expect Bottomline’s Mobile Payments for Corporates module will appeal to a very wide-range of businesses. This fully automated solution can be especially attractive to businesses such as those in the utility and insurance sectors that still rely on high volumes of costly check generation.”

Barclays opened up Pingit to corporate accounts over a year ago, but expects the integration with Bottomline's module to ease the switch to mobile payments for businesses unwilling to undertake the work required to adapt their inhouse software.

Darren Foulds, managing director for Pingit, Barclays, says: “Over £2bn has been transferred to date via Pingit and this mobile integration functionality will allow Bottomline’s customers to quickly adopt both Pingit and Paym payment methods. It’s a payment option that will provide extra security, as well as greater speed and convenience for businesses and their customers.”