Email money to anyone with a bank account

Egg is launching a micropayment service called Egg Pay this week that will allow its customers to email cash to any UK bank account.

Money can be sent to anyone with an email address and a UK bank account and there is no need for recipients to register for an Egg Pay account to receive a payment.

Egg customers can settle transactions of up to £200 simply by entering the recipient's details into their Egg Pay account.

The recipient then receives an email alert containing a URL unique to that transaction.

The payment is processed when the recipient logs on and correctly answers two security questions pre-set by the sender.

Egg research shows that one third of British adults - or 14 million people - are interested in using digital payments, and 20 million regularly use email.

According to the British Bankers Association, there are 110 million bank accounts in the UK.

But while the potential may look promising, Andy Thompson, head of new product development with Egg, said the bank expects a very gradual take up among its two million customers.

Unlike other micropayment offerings, Egg Pay will work on the national bank clearing system BACS, so recipients will still have to wait three to four working days for payments to clear.

Thompson explained why: "We'd love to be able to do same day clearance if we could, but that would only work on an internal Egg system. The waiting time means it's a global banking system. It can go through all the banks in the UK."

Egg plans to introduce an internal, same-day clearing service for its own customers once take-up reaches critical mass.

There are also plans to expand the service to business customers, and process larger payments in the future.

As with credit card payments, Egg will guarantee transactions against fraud.

Annual AER on an Egg Pay account is two per cent compared with half a per cent on Egg's base accounts and 2.5 per cent on off line, telephone accounts.