PAYM System Closing

AstroTerry

I've just heard that the PAYM system is closing on 7th Mar 2023 after only starting in 2014. I think it is a great way to pay smaller amounts to friends and acquaintances - basically if you both have online/mobile banking then you can use a mobile number to pay people. They say it is being closed because people use other ways to pay. I am not using things like Paypal to pay my friends for lunch, coffee, green fees etc, and it takes much longer to set up a BACs payment with sort code and account umbers.

Can we stop it from closing?

eskbanker

Its closure was announced in September, so I'd have thought that if there was to be any prospect of getting the decision to be reversed, action would need to have been taken long before now.

AmityNeon

It was convenient for those who registered their number, but such a requirement made the service unreliable as a whole. It may just be me, but I don't recall there being any significant degree of marketing to try to cement the feature into everyday life; there was no collective industry strategy, which resulted in the individual banks just burying the feature unexplained in submenus.

I can understand newer forms of mobile payments supplanting it, such as those where contact lists can be synchronised and/or payment links generated, some even with lite social media features sprinkled on top, but those are all still individual efforts by individual companies on closed platforms, and none have widespread national adoption.

"Faster Payments through online banking" is hardly a substitute; alas, here we still are relying on names, sorts codes and account numbers, despite how deeply smartphones are now embedded into the finance industry.

Rob5342

Monzo and Starling are good as you can find people nearby to pay, and Monzo syncs with your contacts list too.

I was going to say that it's something that Whatsapp should implement as that's taken over from text messages as the standard message platform, but it looks like they already have in some countries. Hopefully they'll roll it out here.

EarthBoy

Rob5342 said:

Monzo and Starling are good as you can find people nearby to pay

Only if they've got a Monzo or Starling account.  PAYM was good because the other person didn't have to be in the same bank as you.

Faster payments through a bank app works fine. You only have to set up the payee, using sort code and account number, once. After that it's saved for future use and it's just as quick as using PAYM.  Setting up a new payee is quick and easy on Lloyds, Halifax, or Starling, but it can be a hassle on some other apps e.g. Nationwide demands you use a card reader. 

penners324

The number of people using it is miniscule. I doubt any bank wants to keep it operational for that.

sausage_time

Sad to see it go. I did use it from time to time, and for at hoc payments to people I know there's no real generic alternative.

blue.peter

It seemed an excellent idea, and I registered for it years ago. I'm sorry to see it go. In practice, however, I've never once had occasion to use it.

jon81uk

sausage_time said:

Sad to see it go. I did use it from time to time, and for at hoc payments to people I know there's no real generic alternative.

BACs transfer is the main alternative. Paypal is the second one probably.
But for most people it was easy to just say my sort code is XX-XX-XX and my account is XXXXXXX in a text message to a friend.Quicker than checking to see if they are registered for PayM or not.
Or some people just say Paypal it to my email X@X.com.

flo22

jon81uk said:

sausage_time said:

Sad to see it go. I did use it from time to time, and for at hoc payments to people I know there's no real generic alternative.

BACs transfer is the main alternative. 

FPS not Bacs

EarthBoy

jon81uk said:

sausage_time said:

Sad to see it go. I did use it from time to time, and for at hoc payments to people I know there's no real generic alternative.

But for most people it was easy to just say my sort code is XX-XX-XX and my account is XXXXXXX in a text message to a friend.Quicker than checking to see if they are registered for PayM or not.
Or some people just say Paypal it to my email X@X.com.

A lot of banks now let you send your bank details to someone in a message without you having to type them out.

Lloyds, Halifax, Barclays, Starling, Nationwide, and TSB all have this facility.