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Barclays Planning to Launch Apple Pay Support in UK in Early 2016

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Apr 12, 2001
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Apple Pay launched in the United Kingdom in July at more than 250,000 locations across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but Barclays remains notably absent from the group of banks supporting the mobile payments service.

Nevertheless, Barclays remains committed to supporting Apple Pay in the future. Barclays CEO of Personal and Corporate Banking Ashok Vaswani today told customer Mike Jobson by email that the bank plans to roll out Apple Pay in early 2016.
We have signed up for ApplePay and will launch it very early in the New Year. We truly value your custom and hope that you continue to bank with us particularly since we are launching this shortly.
Click to expand...
A high-level executive at Barclays previously stated the bank anticipated "imminent" support of Apple Pay, and the bank later publicly confirmed it will support Apple Pay in the "future," but no specific launch timeframe had been provided.

Barclays is the only major financial institution of the "Big Four" banks in the U.K. that has yet to adopt Apple Pay. Participating banks include Bank of Scotland, First Direct, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, M&S Bank, MBNA, Nationwide, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander and Ulster Bank.

MacRumors has contacted Barclays for comment.

Article Link: Barclays Planning to Launch Apple Pay Support in UK in Early 2016
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/07/barclays-apple-pay-uk-early-2016/
AtheistP3ace

AtheistP3ace

macrumors 6502a
Sep 17, 2014
658
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Philly
Awesome to see apple pay taking off elsewhere. Hope it sticks around. I do like it just feels like most of the places I shop don't have it or it just doesn't work all the time. Mostly by fault of the store. Sometimes the machines seem like they aren't turned on all the time to accept it.
 
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Robert.Walter

Robert.Walter

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Jul 10, 2012
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"We have signed up for ApplePay and will launch it very early in the New Year. We truly value your custom and hope that you continue to bank with us particularly since we are launching this shortly."

This seems like it was written by Ashok from Dilbert rather than Ashok VP of Corporate and Personal Banking.

It is also clear that Barclays is trying to keep customers from fleeing due to the lack of Pay on offer.

I wonder if the stooge that sold the board on the idea that Barclays didn't need Pay got fired.
 
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Robert.Walter

Robert.Walter

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Jul 10, 2012
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mtneer said:
Why did they hold out for so long? Were they hoping for a Euro version of CurrentC?
Click to expand...

Because someone decided to double-down on all the cash the had already sunk into the Barclays bPay system.

So now they have a clumsy uncompetitive homebrew payment system, no Apple Pay until half a year after their competitors, and are likely seeing a customer out flux.

I wonder if heads rolled.
 
C

captain cadet

macrumors 6502
Sep 2, 2012
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mtneer said:
Why did they hold out for so long? Were they hoping for a Euro version of CurrentC?
Click to expand...
*Cough* UK isn't part of the euro zone and we use sterling *cough*
They do though have their own system which they probably wanted to push and didn't want apple pay, but they did lose a few customers which these banks don't like as its so easy to move (as I just done)...
 
mikejobson

mikejobson

macrumors newbie
Sep 22, 2015
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iamasmith said:
Or to paraphrase... we managed to string you along by saying 'imminent launch' and hope we can keep that going indefinitely whilst we spam our sub-par bPay service adds at you.
Click to expand...

Amusing to see most comments on bPay social adverts giving them stick over Apple Pay though
 
mikejobson

mikejobson

macrumors newbie
Sep 22, 2015
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Robert.Walter said:
"We have signed up for ApplePay and will launch it very early in the New Year. We truly value your custom and hope that you continue to bank with us particularly since we are launching this shortly."

This seems like it was written by Ashok from Dilbert rather than Ashok VP of Corporate and Personal Banking.

It is also clear that Barclays is trying to keep customers from fleeing due to the lack of Pay on offer.

I wonder if the stooge that sold the board on the idea that Barclays didn't need Pay got fired.
Click to expand...

I was pretty shocked to get a reply considering most social media comments got ignored.
 
T

tech3475

macrumors 6502
May 17, 2011
311
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AtheistP3ace said:
Awesome to see apple pay taking off elsewhere. Hope it sticks around. I do like it just feels like most of the places I shop don't have it or it just doesn't work all the time. Mostly by fault of the store. Sometimes the machines seem like they aren't turned on all the time to accept it.
Click to expand...

With it being a variant of the current contactless system, hopefully it will stay around.

Im finding it useful for when i buy breakfast out, easier than carrying the couple of quid i use to have to and I dont have to worry about accidental payments like with contactless cards.

once Android pay comes along and they remove the spending limits, maybe things will take off further.
 
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2457282

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Dec 6, 2012
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Slightly off topic, but how is apple pay working in the UK? I ask because I heard that although all machines are NFC, there may still be differences that would prevent Apple Pay from working on some (older) machines.

Here in the US it is slowly (painfully so) getting better as vendors turn on their machines or add them in their retail locations (and yet require signatures and sometimes even IDs-- SMH).
 
J

jroadley

macrumors regular
Oct 5, 2009
124
6
Norwich, UK
Cuban Missles said:
Slightly off topic, but how is apple pay working in the UK? I ask because I heard that although all machines are NFC, there may still be differences that would prevent Apple Pay from working on some (older) machines.

Here in the US it is slowly (painfully so) getting better as vendors turn on their machines or add them in their retail locations (and yet require signatures and sometimes even IDs-- SMH).
Click to expand...

Majority of shops have contactless points - we have a £20/£30 limit on it though - so for grabbing coffee/snacks/tube/lunch it's great. I'm not aware of any issues with people using it.
 
C

Crusoe

macrumors regular
Feb 6, 2014
166
54
Robert.Walter said:
Because someone decided to double-down on all the cash the had already sunk into the Barclays bPay system.

So now they have a clumsy uncompetitive homebrew payment system, no Apple Pay until half a year after their competitors, and are likely seeing a customer out flux.

I wonder if heads rolled.
Click to expand...

I would be amazed if more than a handful of customers switch banks solely for reasons relating to Apple Pay.
 
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69Mustang

69Mustang

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In between a rock and a hard place
Does it really matter right now? You can have every financial institution in the world supporting Apple Pay but until those financial institutions start selling food, clothes, or other consumer goods, this is just lipstick on a pig. We need more retailers to accept the Pays: Apple, Android, Samsung, etc.

edit: As Sasparilla pointed out, Europe is fairly set with retailers accepting NFC. My rant is more about the US retail situation.
 
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Sasparilla

macrumors 68000
Jul 6, 2012
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ncksmth said:
What I find frustrating is that the US barclays is offering it now https://www.barclaycardus.com/servicing/applePay which seems a little ridiculous. That bPay dead horse must be a bloodied pulp with all the beating its received.
Click to expand...

And have offered it a very long time in the U.S....so they had lots of experience with it...it should have been a slam dunk to be there opening day for them.

69Mustang said:
Does it really matter right now? You can have every financial institution in the world supporting Apple Pay but until those financial institutions start selling food, clothes, or other consumer goods, this is just lipstick on a pig. We need more retailers to accept the Pays: Apple, Android, Samsung, etc.
Click to expand...

That's the thing, over in Europe and the U.K. NFC based transactions (what you need for Apple Pay) are everywhere (unlike here in the U.S. where retailers were turning the functionality off when Apple Pay launched). So the retailers are ready for it over there (and in Canada).
 
M

mgs315

macrumors member
Apr 28, 2011
79
1
'Bout time. Was thinking that if I hadn't heard anything in the next few weeks I was going to jump ship. For my banking purposes there's not much difference between any of the standard high street banks.
 
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