Barclays PingIt to shut down

Barclays PingIt mobile payment service is to close according to a recent report from Sifted.

PingIt has been around for a decade and allows the ability to send money to people using your debit or credit card. The app itself is very good and well designed, but over the years it hasn't kept up with the changes in the payments sector.

Payments have come a long way in the last 10 years with debit card usage now higher than cash, contactless payments becoming the norm, Apple & Google releasing secure contactless wallets on their phones and watches and the introduction of Open Banking.

PingIt was released before a lot of these technologies were invented and was ahead of the game for the most part with only PayPal for competition. It seems that PingIt didn't continually innovate to utilise these new technologies or understand how consumers and its users wanted to use payments on a day-to-day basis.

PingIt never used Apple Pay or Google Pay for example, which would have dramatically reduced friction for payments while increasing security.

Understanding where your customers are and what they are doing is crucial to the development and success of any product or service. That's why we utilise Apple & Google Pay as they provide convenience, security and a frictionless experience for anyone using Collctiv.

PingIt focused on being a peer-to-peer (P2P) payments platform of which there are quite a few these days including PayPal, as well as neo-banks like Monzo who offer similar solutions for their customers. Differentiating yourself is really important, and as most of PingIt's users were Barclays customers it felt like you needed to be a Barclays customer in order to use the service which wasn't the case.

Collctiv focuses exclusively on group payments, making it really easy to collect and spend money as a group. For consumers looking to collect money from their group of friends - whether for a group present, event, holiday or anything else done as a group- the Collctiv App enables them to quickly and simply get that money into a pot. We're continually looking to understand our users' needs and provide a solution that works for them. It's why we don't get everyone in the group to download anything, create an account or do any banking to use Collctiv. Only the person organising the activity needs download the app - everyone else can just use Apple Pay, Google Pay or their card to send the money. It's really easy for the organiser to then see how much they have collected for that activity.

Timing is also important with businesses. As previously mentioned, payments have come a long way in the last 10 years and are now in a really good place to provide convenient, secure solutions to everyone.

Without knowing whether or not there were any internal politics at Barclays contributing to why the app failed, from a usability standpoint, it simply didn't keep up with the changes in the industry and how other providers have moved past them.

Everyone can learn from the failures and successes of PingIt. Safe to say that we will continue to innovate, listen to our customers and keep pushing what's possible with group payments.

If you're a PingIt user you can download Collctiv and get started instantly, for free.