UK retail bank Barclays is extending Pingit, its service that enables transfers between bank accounts using only a subscriber’s mobile phone number, to international transactions in a move the bank claims will have a radical effect on the international money transfer market.

In the first phase, payments from the UK to Kenya will be available to make via Pingit from later this week. The bank plans to roll out the Pingit service, which does not carry a fee, to a further 12 countries mainly in Africa by the end of this year and then expand it into Europe in early 2013.

Pingit, which launched in the UK earlier this year, is available to any bank account holder in the country (not just Barclays) by downloading an app. However the Kenyan leg of the initial international launch will only be available to 120,000 users of the Barclays Hello Money service.

Barclays says it is the first bank in the world to offer a fee-free international service for mobile payments. However it does carry limits. UK customers can send up to £750 per day via the service and customers in Kenya will be allowed to receive a maximum of £5,000 in total per day. There is no mention of whether Kenya users can send funds to UK users.

International payments via Pingit will arrive instantly says the bank in comparison with traditional services which are slower and carry a fee.

Customers will also be able to benefit from access to wholesale currency prices via the bank’s BARX FX platform shortly after launch.

Barclays has a presence in the Kenyan market which is an early adopter of mobile payments, most notably M-Pesa. There are also an estimated 200,000 people living in the UK who were born in Kenya and might want to send payments there or already do so.

To date, the Pingit service in the UK has been downloaded over one million times since its launch six months ago.

Later this year, Barclays plans to offer the money transfer service between the UK and 12 further countries. The twelve countries are Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Uganda, UAE, Seychelles and Mauritius.