A new Pay-As-You-Go mobile service has been launched for the social housing sector, enabling tenants to save towards their rent by simply topping up via their mobile phone. Payment specialist allpay has launched the SIM card scheme allpay Mobile, following a nine-month pilot with several housing associations that began last year.

allpay has teamed up with ET Telecomm for the scheme, which offers tenants market-leading call rates below major UK operators and a 10 per cent loyalty bonus towards their rent account for every top-up. In action, if a user tops up £10, they get the full £10 worth of credit and a further £1 off their rent account.

In order to encourage take-up, tenants can keep their existing handsets and numbers and simply sign up online once their housing association or local authority has signed up for the scheme. They can then top up in cash on the high street or by phone or online, and manage their account themselves.

There are also further incentives, such as free calls between allpay Mobile users and the ability for all members of a household to have their 10 per cent loyalty bonus added to the same rent account. allpay Managing Director, Tony Killeen said both housing associations and tenants stand to benefit from the innovative scheme.

He said: “Through allpay Mobile, tenants can boost their rent accounts without changing their behaviour, meaning they have less money to find for their rent and their landlord has less rent to collect.

“We believe the scheme has a significant role to play through welfare reform, which has resulted in many tenants having their benefits cut and leaving landlords with more rent to collect. The scheme is very complementary to the services allpay already provides – not only do we now provide the widest range of ways for residents to pay their bills, but a way for them to save towards them too,” Killeen commented.

As part of the offer, housing associations and local authorities are given a wide range of promotional tools and literature to promote take-up to residents such as leaflets, posters, and their own company-branded allpay Mobile webpages to provide tenants with access to the latest mobile handsets and special offers.

Kristina Parker, from Shoreline Housing Partnership, one of the original pilot landlords, said: “allpay Mobile enables us to offer our tenants a great way to save money on their rent, helping us give back to our community. Being able to link the loyalty scheme to multiple phones really shows that allpay develop innovative products with their clients and end users at the forefront of their minds.”