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A bank today unveiled plans to enable people to pay each other and small businesses using just their Twitter handle in what it says will be a UK banking first.

Launching on both Android phones and iOS devices on March 10, people using Barclays's Pingit payment service will be able to link their Twitter handle to the service.

Pingit, which was launched in 2012, already allows people to send and receive payments using mobile phone numbers, without needing to exchange bank account numbers and sort codes.

People using the Barclays Pingit payment service will be able to link their Twitter handle to the service

Pingit is open to people who do not bank with Barclays, as well as those who are its customers.

The expansion of the service will also be open to non-Barclays customers, meaning that it can potentially be used by the 13.5 million people in the UK who use Twitter.

To date, Pingit has received 3.7 million downloads and more than £1 billion has been sent using it.

This new way of payment will also be available to businesses, potentially helping the 57,000 companies in the UK currently signed up to Pingit.

Barclays said that 80 per cent of UK Twitter users now access the social network through their mobile regularly.

To sign up, users will be able to link their Twitter handle to their Pingit profile under the app settings.

Transfers: The maximum daily amount that a person can send to another person via Pingit is £1,500

In order to use the new service, both the payee and the person paying need to be signed up to both Twitter and the Barclays Pingit app.

The maximum daily amount that a person can send to another person via Pingit is £1,500.

Darren Foulds, director of Barclays mobile banking and Pingit, said: 'Adding the ability to pay people or a small business using just a Twitter handle brings together a social and digital experience to create a new step forward for mobile payments in the UK.'

One internet security expert said the Twitter handles of customers exchanging money are most likely intended to act as 'identifiers' - rather than bank details being linked to a Twitter account.

David Emm, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, told MailOnline: 'The idea behind it is convenience for one thing, but the other thing is security.

'If I want to pay you £20 or £50 and have your mobile number then I can use Pingit to do that. Pingit have your bank details and my bank details, but they don't share that. Neither party needs the other's information.

'That is the thinking behind it - a nice, convenient way of doing that I'm not totally sure what the mechanism of linking is. I rather suspect that like the phone number they're just using it is an as an identifier.'

Asked if he felt the system was safe for customers, Mr Emm said: 'If all we're talking about here is that an identifier then I don't see why not.

'I'm using the Twitter handle as a hanger on which I'm paying the money to you. I can't see there is any additional risk.'

He added: 'If we're talking about a mechanism that is linking my bank account details to my Twitter settings, then it's something else, but I don't think we're talking about that.

'More and more people are using Twitter and it's second nature. Everyone has a phone number, but for many people, especially young people, Twitter is a more ready-to-hand identifier.'

Technology has transformed the way that people pay in recent years.

Spending on contactless 'tap and go' cards more than trebled over the last year to reach a record £2.32 billion in 2014, according to figures recently released by the UK Cards Association.

Paym, a cross-industry mobile payments scheme which enables people to send payments as easily as texting, recently said that nearly two million people have now signed up to the initiative, which launched last April.

Wearable payments technology is also being developed. Last year, Barclaycard unveiled its bPay wristband, which allows people to pay with a wave of the wrist.

It has also been trialling pairs of contactless payment gloves, which people can use by touching the back of their hand on the reader at the till, in a similar way to making contactless card payments.