SINGAPORE — Imagine while you are out with a friend after dinner, and after that, instead of fumbling with bank account numbers to pay your friend, you can simply send it to him using Facebook or through email.

Yesterday, OCBC Bank introduced a new service in Singapore to allow peer to peer payments to any bank account as long as the sender has the recipient’s email, mobile number or is a ‘friend’ of his on Facebook.

How it works: To send money, the payer has to log in to his OCBC mobile app which will allow him to choose the recipient via either of the three platforms.

The sender can then generate his own pass code for the recipient, who would be notified of the payment via Facebook or the other two platforms.

He can then key in his bank account details on a secure OCBC site, key in the passcode, and the money is transferred. Maybank also has a similar service allowing for peer-to-peer money transfers, where the pass code has to be directly disclosed by the sender to the recipient.