The way we pay for things and manage our finances are changing quickly recently with the advancement of mobile technology in recent years, and today we can tell you about the availability of the O2 Wallet UK mobile payment app that is ready to download.

This new application from O2 is going up against other payment apps such as Barclays PingIt, and acts as your mobile finances centre, and you don’t even have to be a customer of O2 to use the application. From within the application users can manage their accounts, check balances, and even send and receive money from friends with nothing except their phone number.

There will be some that are worrying how safe the application is but according to O2 Moneys MD James Le Brocq the application was tested for months internally, and has been the subject of extensive “stress testing” from security experts.

Things such as pin numbers, passwords, and other personal and financial data are stored on remote central servers instead of the smartphone itself, and O2 believe this is the safest way to provide mobile payment services. There are limits on the amount of money you can load into and spend from your account, and send and receive in Money Messages.

We decided to download the application ourselves as non 2 customers, and it takes ages to set up with all the various lock and verification codes not to mention numerous passwords that need setting up, but as long as the people who you intend to send money to do the same the app should work well.

The application even asks you if you want to share the financial transaction via your Facebook account, and besides the Android version that is available via Google Play users of the BlackBerry and iOS platforms also have a version to download.

Will you be downloading the O2 Wallet application?