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Savills Auctions and Barclays have announced that they will allow customers to buy houses using their mobile phones.
Using the Barclays Pingit app, customers of the property auctioneer can now put down a deposit on a home by scanning a QR code.
The service has already been used by a homeowner who put down a £23,000 deposit on a new home in Mitcham, South London they purchased at a Savills auction on February 10th and 11th.
Darren Foulds, Barclays mobile banking and Pingit product director said: “This shows the potential for mobile payments as services like Pingit gain more widespread use.”
“For quick, secure transactions on the go, mobile is fast-becoming a trusted method of making payments – whether from person-to-person or, as in this case, to pay a business.”
“For businesses large or small, Pingit enables payments to be accepted through a mobile app. For consumers it offers a totally secure way of making payments that are at the same time quick – and on a device that almost everyone in the UK carries with them on a permanent basis.”
Sam Winser, an associate in the Savills London auctions team added: “Creating a service that allows a buyer to put down a deposit and transfer the money in a matter of seconds, such as Pingit, is really making a big difference to our speed and efficiency, allowing us to do more business, more quickly.”
“It gives buyers the ability to send and for us to receive guaranteed funds immediately, which is obviously hugely advantageous.”
Since it launched in February 2012, Pingit has been downloaded 2.5 million times and the amount of money sent using the service totals over £350 million.
The Centre for Economic and Business Research has predicted that by 2020, 20 million adults will use their mobiles to pay for goods and services, with the total value of mobile payments reaching £18.1 billion by 2018.
