“ING Direct customers can now transfer payments to friends with the bump of a cellphone — no account numbers needed,” Sarah Kessler reports for Mashable.

“The bank released an updated version of its iPhone app [ING DIRECT - ING DIRECTiTunes link] on Wednesday morning that integrates an API from Bump Technologies, a startup that makes it easy to transfer information between phones by tapping them together,” Kessler reports. “Previously Bump’s technology has been used to exchange contact information, photos and music between users. This is the first time that a bank has leveraged it for person-to-person payments.”

Kessler reports, “When a Bump is recognized, a signal is sent to cloud servers that match it with another Bump that occurred at the exact same place and time. It decides those two Bumps are a match, and exchanges information between them. In ING’s case, each user will need to log into his or her secure account to send or receive payment. Bump’s role is to ID participants in a person-to-person transaction instead of requiring them to type and verify account numbers.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "krquet" for the heads up.]