Bank of Ireland has launched a service that enables subscribers to send and receive  funds, using only their mobile number to authenticate the transaction.

The bank said its Pay to Mobile service is the first such money transfer scheme in Ireland, although such services are already available in other countries. One example is Barclays Bank’s Pingit scheme in the UK.

However the Irish bank’s service is only available for its own account holders who can send funds just to other Bank of Ireland account holders.

It says “almost 20,000” users have pre-registered for the service which is only available to iPhone users, although an Android version is planned to follow shortly.

The attraction of this approach is that mobile numbers are used as an alternative to users supplying their actual bank accounts details to enable a transaction, which is a more secure arrangement.

The bank says its existing mobile banking app has attracted “over 180,000 active users” and almost 10 million log ins since launch.