Alliance & Leicester (A &L) is to offer customers the ability to perform bank transfers and payments on mobile phones by the end of the year.

A&L already lets its customers check statements, top up pay-as-you-go phones and receive SMS balance updates for free.

‘We should be taking this to the next level of making peer-to-peer payments and transferring money by the end of the year,’ said Andy Muddimer, head of
internet banking at A&L.

Royal Bank of Scotland became the latest to offer mobile phone banking last week, joining HSBC, First Direct and A&L.

Customers can access account information anywhere, but A&L says it is the first to confirm plans to allow them to transfer cash.

Mobile banking can be more secure than the internet because only a handset linked to the account can be used to access information and no data is held on the phone. A password is needed to log in, and an account cannot be linked to more than one device.

But experts have warned that the move will make it easier for criminals to launder money.

‘Crooks are going to love these developments; addressing this problem is one of the reasons why there has been delays to the faster payments scheme,’ said a senior banking industry source.

A survey conducted by Jupiter Research in April suggested that only eight per cent of online consumers with a mobile phone are interested in using it to check their balance.