O2 to launch mobile money transfer app to rival Barclays' Pingit The launch is likely to surprise Barclays, which thought it had between one and two years' lead on its competitors for a "robust" solution, and hailed Pingit as a watershed moment for banking on a par with the invention of the credit card. Barclays" innovation has already been greeted with widespread scepticism among customers anxious about security. O2 will arguably have to ask customers to make an even bigger leap of faith to entrust their banking details to a mobile operator. However, Mr Dunne said he did not anticipate a problem: "We launched our original O2 wallet comments, and no one but no one said 'what is O2 doing in financial services'," he said. News of O2"s imminent launch comes amid a flurry of announcements about mobile payments at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona. Vodafone has unveiled a partnership with Visa for what it claims will be the world's largest mobile payments network, allowing Vodafone customers to "charge" their mobile with virtual money and use it instead of cash. Telecoms companies are scrambling into action in an effort to keep control of the potentially lucrative market, as it has done in Africa, where mobile payments are widespread, rather than cede it to banks or other players like Google.