20,000 sign up for PingIt in two days

Enthusiastic take up for Barclays' 'pay it from your mobile number' banking app.

Pingit was launched last week to much fanfare. It's being touted as the first banking app in the UK that replicates the kind of experience Africans have been using for years with M-PESA – letting people make payments using their mobile number and a PIN rather than through bank sort codes or credit card numbers.

According to This Is Money, the service attracted 20,000 subscribers in two days.

These are users that went online to sign up and thereby link their mobile numbers to their bank account details.

It's hard to say whether the early rush indicates public approval for the scheme, which has been scrutinised carefully for its security risks. After all, there are always early adopters for such projects.

The common consent seems to be that the Barclays' back-end is pretty secure but that there is a risk of malware intercepting the app and sending off payments to dodgy numbers.