P2P transfer
A peer-to-peer (P2P) transfer is a direct payment of money from one person or account to another, without a merchant or intermediary sitting between them as the recipient.
What it means. P2P transfers cover the everyday movement of money between individuals — splitting a bill, repaying a friend, sending money to family — and, more broadly, direct account-to-account payments where the counterparties are the two account holders rather than a business selling something. The defining feature is directness: value moves from one party's account to another's, with no merchant, invoice or purchase in between. It is the simplest conceptual form of a payment.
How it works. P2P transfers ride on underlying rails — Faster Payments in the UK, SEPA in the euro area, and their equivalents elsewhere — which is what makes many of them near-instant today. Consumer apps and banking services have made P2P payments a routine, real-time experience, often reduced to a phone number or a username, but beneath the interface they are standard account-to-account payments on established rails. The convenience layer sits on top; the money still moves over the same infrastructure as any other transfer.
Where it fits. P2P transfer is a useful contrast to other payment types: distinct from card payments (which involve a merchant and a card network), from bulk and batch payments (many recipients at once), and from third-party payments (where a party other than the account holder is involved). It represents the simplest, most direct form of moving money between two accounts, and the near-instant P2P experience that consumers now expect has raised the bar for what all account-to-account payments are expected to feel like. What was once a slow, manual transfer is now an instant, everyday action, and that shift in expectation has reshaped how banks and apps design payments.