The Cumberland Building Society has launched an Apple Pay service.

This has gone live today and will enable its customers to make mobile payments via their iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple Watch.

The service is the latest in a series of digital developments for the building society, designed to help its current accounts rival some of the UK’s biggest banks.

Alex Windle, marketing director at the Cumberland, said: “With growing numbers of retailers in our region accepting mobile payment, we are pleased to now be able to offer our customers the speed and simplicity of Apple Pay.”

Apple Pay links a product to a credit or debit card but actual card numbers are not stored on the device or on Apple servers.

A unique Device Account Number is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in the Secure Element on the device.

Each transaction is authorised with a one-time unique dynamic security code.

It works with iPhone SE, iPhone 6 and later, and Apple Watch.

The Cumberland's customers will need to add their Cumberland debit card details to the Wallet app on their Apple device.

This news comes after the Cumberland launched an Android pay service, for phone's using Apple's rival operating system, earlier this month.

The Cumberland is one of three building societies based in Cumbria - the others are the Penrith and the Furness - and is the 10th biggest such organisation in the UK. It has more than £2.2bn in assets and more than 140,000 customers

It is the only mutual other than Nationwide, the UK's largest, to offer a full current account range.

It has its headquarters in Kingstown, Carlisle and has 34 branches. The majority of these are in Cumbria though it also has a presence in southern Scotland, Northumberland and north Lancashire.

The group invested heavily in its digital products last year, which included the introduction of an all-device booking system.

Two independent surveys over the course of the last year saw the Cumberland’s banking customers to be the ‘Happiest in the UK’.