Mobile Payments has been receiving an increasing amount of attention in the media recently, both for mobile commerce and for person-to-person money transfers.

Two recent product launches in the UK of Barclaycard Pingit and O2’s mobile wallet have raised public awareness even more.

Here we take a look at the functionality offered by these apps, and how well they actually perform in today’s real world.

At the start of February, Barclaycard announced the launch of their Pingit mobile app that allowed users to transfer money using mobile numbers. By the start of May the app had been downloaded over 500,000 times clearly showing that consumers are willing to use their mobile device in order to make payments.

A customer downloads the app (iOS, RIM, or Android), registers their mobile number and Barclay bank account number into the app, and then they are free to make transfers to others. Their is a daily limit of £300 per day for sending, and £1,000 per day for receiving.

O2 Wallet

More recently O2 announced the launch of its mobile wallet, a digital service combining:

• Money Message: allows customers to transfer money through text messaging
• Shopping via your mobile: makes mobile shopping easier by using barcodes in order to compare the price of goods from over 100 retailers
• Your phone as your wallet: allows consumers to digitise their current debit and credit cards in order to pay for goods using them through their mobile device

James Le Brocq, O2 Money’s managing director said: “With O2 Wallet, it’s easier to transfer money, track expenditure and pay swiftly and securely, all using your mobile. We believe it will transform the way people manage their finances and spend money.”

The BBC opinion of mobile payment apps today?

However like all new technology it will take time for both consumers and merchants to get use to the new way of doing things. For example earlier this week BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones tried to live for a few days by only spending money through his mobile device.

His conclusions were: “Mobile Money from this phone, just isn’t working. Too complicated, fare too few people use it, nobody understands it and it needs a lot of work yet.