Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Barclays Confirms it Will Launch Apple Pay by Late March

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
68,240
39,044



Barclays has confirmed that it will launch Apple Pay within the next 45 to 60 days, based on a two-week-old email dated January 12, suggesting the large British bank will support the iPhone-based mobile payments service by no later than March 28.

Barclays-Apple-Pay-UK.jpg

The launch date was provided by Barclays CEO of Personal and Corporate Banking Ashok Vaswani in what appears to be a legitimate email sent to customer Oli Foster-Burnell, and later reported by Engadget. We can verify the executive has emailed customers about Apple Pay in the past.

Barclays is the only financial institution among the "Big Four" banks in the U.K. that has yet to adopt Apple Pay. The country's participating issuers include the Bank of Scotland, First Direct, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, M&S Bank, MBNA, Nationwide, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, Tesco Bank, TSB and Ulster Bank.

Barclays Executive confirms #applepay launch date. At last! pic.twitter.com/5wuzMoGs4V - Oli Foster-Burnell (@orfoster) January 25, 2016
Click to expand...
Apple Pay launched in the U.K. in July 2015 at more than 250,000 locations across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Barclays is perhaps the most notable holdout from the group of banks supporting the mobile payments service. The bank serves over 48 million customers.

Article Link: Barclays Confirms it Will Launch Apple Pay by Late March
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/26/barclays-apple-pay-launch-late-march-email/
Finally, I have been trying to use contactless with Barclays for ages, they refuse to give me a contactless card until mine expires (in 3 years!) and constantly push the pointless bPay key rings and bracelet as a solution. No thanks.

Resorted to opening a Halifax account to take advantages of Apple Pay.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Keane16 and orbital~debris
Was speaking to Ashok last year about this and he always said the new year but still march is further away than I thought it would be. They wasn't going to do it but the pressure from all the other banks supporting it meant a lot of customers switched accounts. They thought bPay would be better for their customers. Flop though!
 
Last edited:
I think Barclays really seemed to have put a lot of (wasted) effort behind their alternative solutions.

They've been trying since at least 2013 when they were pushing their Barclaycard 'Payband' service at the Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park. That pretty much failed miserably. And since then they've been offering stickers (RFID?) and fobs?

…just leave it to Apple to do it right!
 
Yorkshire Bank haven't even said if they will ever support Apple Pay, at least Barclays intend on doing.
 
About bloody time. It's ridiculous. I wonder how many customers they've lost over this. I would swap, just can't be asked.
 
SMIDG3T said:
About bloody time. It's ridiculous. I wonder how many customers they've lost over this. I would swap, just can't be asked.
Click to expand...

I assume you mean “arsed” not asked.

I guess you’ve not heard of the new 7 day switch system?

I’ve just switched to Santander from Nationwide (not for Apple Pay reasons). 5 minutes to fill in an online form and that’s it. 7 days later your account, all direct debits, standing orders, contacts, cards….every swaps to your new bank. In fact took me 5 days.

Pretty hassle free if you ask me.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Radeon85, jonatron and orbital~debris
This is good news for UK Apple Pay. Barclays are by far the largest bank here in the UK (over 40m accounts, with a country that has a population of 65m). Shame Apple don't release Apple Pay figures, I'm sure you would see a large increase in % of Apple Pay users in UK once they are onboard.
 
Last edited:
MLVC said:
Yeah yeah, what about the rest of Europe?
Click to expand...
Many European banks are already introducing HCE payments, which work exactly like Apple Pay (at least from the end user's PoV), so it seems that ship has sailed for Apple. Now they have to compete with banks directly. Ironically, HCE payments can't be used on iPhones because of inaccessible NFC chip.

So, we can't use local mobile payment systems because of competing Apple Pay... that we can't use either :rolleyes:
 
When will banks support Apple Pay on my business account?

It's really handy for travelling and expenses...

Not sure why they treat it differently?! Anyone know?
 
I've used Apple Pay ever since First Direct supported it last Autumn. Absolutely love it.

I've found more and more retailers want to take your card in their possession and it was starting to irritate me - especially for contactless payments. Apple Pay forces the retailer to pass me the machine, not my card to them.

A few weeks ago I was in a pub and my Apple Pay was rejected. Anyway, long story short, they managed to get hold of my card after more 'rejections' and sent me away to my GF to get her card (stupidly leaving my card on the bar) which the barmaid picked up and tried to do another contactless payment without my authorisation and clearly took my cvv number. My card was cloned and they unsuccessfully (fortunately, as FD spotted it) attempted to pay for some random £1 purchases and then tried to book a holiday on my card.

Basically, if somewhere doesn't support Apple Pay, I'm extremely wary now.
 
  • Like
Reactions: satcomer, orbital~debris, PotatoLeekSoup and 2 others
Pagemakers said:
I assume you mean “arsed” not asked.

I guess you’ve not heard of the new 7 day switch system?

I’ve just switched to Santander from Nationwide (not for Apple Pay reasons). 5 minutes to fill in an online form and that’s it. 7 days later your account, all direct debits, standing orders, contacts, cards….every swaps to your new bank. In fact took me 5 days.

Pretty hassle free if you ask me.
Click to expand...

Hassle free if you have no long term commitments such as mortgages or you can find an account which matches what you have at Barclays. I have a "legacy" account which no longer exists with a very large interest free overdraft, breakdown cover, mobile phone cover, and numerous other advantages. No other bank offers anything like it right now so there isn't a chance I would switch and lose all that for Apple Pay.

We're not all students!

Additionally, I doubt Barclays would have lost many customers as a result of this. Only a very small number of people (such as a small minority on here), would actually care about this and Barclays couldn't care less about you if you tried.

That and probably 90% of Barclays revenue arrives through commercial banking so the fact that they probably lost 0.005% of their customers as a result of not having Apple Pay is....well meaningless.

It's very amusing how some people feel that without Apple, the world would almost fall apart! I've had Apple Pay for three months now (since I got my 6S), and I've only ever used it once....most of my friends with iPhones say exactly the same!
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: mojolicious, 4509968, thering1975 and 2 others
vault said:
Many European banks are already introducing HCE payments, which work exactly like Apple Pay (at least from the end user's PoV), so it seems that ship has sailed for Apple. Now they have to compete with banks directly. Ironically, HCE payments can't be used on iPhones because of inaccessible NFC chip.

So, we can't use local mobile payment systems because of competing Apple Pay... that we can't use either :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

My (Dutch) bank (ING) is very interested in ApplePay, and has said numerous times they'll offer it as soon as possible. So something else (ECB??) is holding it up?
 
  • Like
Reactions: patjem
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back