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

[big-ted]

would go through the pain of switching accounts and changing bank cards

What pain? Switched from Barclays to Santander within 7 days, everything transferred over and anything missed will be automatically rerouted for 3 years

 

[kdarling]

Wonderful. Since the July 14th launch we've been told by Barclays, they had no plans, to 'hey we fired our CEO because of the backlash, imminent support on the way chaps' (To me imminent sounds like a couple days) but no it could be up to 9 months post stating imminent support?

It took a year for Discover to support it. The overwhelming majority of US card providers still don't support it.

The cost and effort to support Apple Pay can be pretty significant, unless you pay a middleman to do most of it.

• At the least, they have to set up both automated and staffed card registration methods, hooked into Apple's servers. That's going to require perhaps new call centers.
• Then they have the choice of either paying Mastercard/Visa/AMEX to handle tokenization (like smaller banks do), or setting up their own to save money. Probably the latter.
• They have to set up procedures to pay MC/V/AMEX the royalty which those entities will then pass onto Apple.
• They have to set up systems and procedures to send Apple the purchase data it demands back from banks.

The last two items are things that politically hold back banks. They don't see much reason to pay Apple for doing nothing except providing registration to the phone. Especially in places where EMV already existed with little fraud. They don't like having the CC schemes (MC/V/A) in the middle. And they certainly don't like sharing previously proprietary purchase data with Apple.

I'm really not sure how that works, once more I'm dumbfounded how their US counterpart adopted it with open arms.

I think they've learned a lot. In the beginning, Apple played US banks like a fiddle by keeping relationships secret, with each bank worried that they'd be left out of something that their competitor might be doing.

Since then, banks have realized that they gave up perhaps too much. Meanwhile, Apple Pay usage is on the decline.

You should actually be proud that a UK institution tried to stand up to Apple's desire for money and data that should not belong to them, unlike major US banks which wimped out at first.

 

[Crusoe]

What pain? Switched from Barclays to Santander within 7 days, everything transferred over and anything missed will be automatically rerouted for 3 years

Sure, of course it can be simple depending on the services you have. But (not talking about my own situation here) with mortgages, ISAs, joint accounts, insurance add-ons, and cards registered with websites it really is a pain for some people. But yes, not a one-size fits all problem, I agree.

 

[g3nw1]

Strange thing happened a few weeks ago when I got my Watch at the Selfridges Apple watch store. when the sales person saw my iPhone she asked me if I wanted to use PAY. I did not think about it at the time as I was using my AMEX from another bank account, and said no thanks I want to use my AMEX card! then I thought about this afterwards as the watch with AppleCare is way over the 30 pounds limit I thought was in place? anyone used it in the UK to make big purchases over 30 pounds? do stores have no limits in the UK? hope this is not true! as PAY is very bad for my bank balance as I use it min 4 times a day just because it is so easy

 

[Glyn H]

Strange thing happened a few weeks ago when I got my Watch at the Selfridges Apple watch store. when the sales person saw my iPhone she asked me if I wanted to use PAY. I did not think about it at the time as I was using my AMEX from another bank account, and said no thanks I want to use my AMEX card! then I thought about this afterwards as the watch with AppleCare is way over the 30 pounds limit I thought was in place? anyone used it in the UK to make big purchases over 30 pounds? do stores have no limits in the UK? hope this is not true! as PAY is very bad for my bank balance as I use it min 4 times a day just because it is so easy

 Store,M&S", Co-op and a few others accept Pay >£30 for a more detailed list have a look at this site.

http://contactless.life/retailers/

 

[tmiw]

You should actually be proud that a UK institution tried to stand up to Apple's desire for money and data that should not belong to them, unlike major US banks which wimped out at first.

Yet more US banks and credit unions accept it every month so apparently Apple's terms aren't stopping them.

 

[tmiw]

You should actually be proud that a UK institution tried to stand up to Apple's desire for money and data that should not belong to them, unlike major US banks which wimped out at first.

Yet more US banks and credit unions accept it every month so apparently Apple's terms aren't stopping them.

 

[Fatboy71]

Which retailers have you had >£45 success at? If they are national retailers that is.

Marks & Spencer was the retailer.

 

[kdarling]

Yet more US banks and credit unions accept it every month so apparently Apple's terms aren't stopping them.

When Apple Pay was announced, credit unions were worried that there was no way for them to afford Apple's fees. They were afraid that they'll get squeezed out by the richer banks.

Some (mostly bigger ones who can afford the fees without taking a loss) have signed up, hoping to win the hearts of younger people, but the number who have committed so far is quite low. After a year, there's still only about 300 credit unions signed up out of something like 7,000. That's 4% of the US credit unions.

For that matter, including banks, Apple Pay is only supported by about 500 issuers. That's out of about 11,000 in the US alone. Again, 4-5%.

It's really too bad Apple is so greedy. Otherwise, there'd be far greater uptake by issuers. Perhaps, as happened with iAds (another attempt by Apple to use its customers to make money), the fee will drop.

 

[Rlong405]

It took a year for Discover to support it. The overwhelming majority of US card providers still don't support it.

The cost and effort to support Apple Pay can be pretty significant, unless you pay a middleman to do most of it.

• At the least, they have to set up both automated and staffed card registration methods, hooked into Apple's servers. That's going to require perhaps new call centers.
• Then they have the choice of either paying Mastercard/Visa/AMEX to handle tokenization (like smaller banks do), or setting up their own to save money. Probably the latter.
• They have to set up procedures to pay MC/V/AMEX the royalty which those entities will then pass onto Apple.
• They have to set up systems and procedures to send Apple the purchase data it demands back from banks.

The last two items are things that politically hold back banks. They don't see much reason to pay Apple for doing nothing except providing registration to the phone. Especially in places where EMV already existed with little fraud. They don't like having the CC schemes (MC/V/A) in the middle. And they certainly don't like sharing previously proprietary purchase data with Apple.

100% agree with everything above
I've seen so many posts, Twitter postings etc whinging at Barclays / Barclaycard to "hurry up and enable ApplePay". Even saw one post that said something like "don't know what's taking you so long, just ring up Apple and tell them you want to use it, simple". I had my head in my hands after I read that one. So misinformed about the work and money required to actually implement ApplePay including (as you rightly say) the percentage Apple takes and also the valuable data that they probably ask the banks to deliver to them on a plate.

 

[tmiw]

When Apple Pay was announced, credit unions were worried that there was no way for them to afford Apple's fees. They were afraid that they'll get squeezed out by the richer banks.

Some (mostly bigger ones who can afford the fees without taking a loss) have signed up, hoping to win the hearts of younger people, but the number who have committed so far is quite low. After a year, there's still only about 300 credit unions signed up out of something like 7,000. That's 4% of the US credit unions.

For that matter, including banks, Apple Pay is only supported by about 500 issuers. That's out of about 11,000 in the US alone. Again, 4-5%.

It's really too bad Apple is so greedy. Otherwise, there'd be far greater uptake by issuers. Perhaps, as happened with iAds (another attempt by Apple to use its customers to make money), the fee will drop.

Or it means that their customers aren't asking for it. Some might already have a card from a bank that supports it, so there's no need for all their cards to have it. Others simply have no interest in paying with a phone or watch (and that's okay!) I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of Americans, if not all of them, have at least one card that they can use with it.

The bigger issues in the US are merchant support and customer acceptance. Apple's US strategy seems to be:

1. Hope that merchants adopt EMV in a reasonable timeframe. This includes getting terminals that have the hardware support for NFC as well as keeping that enabled when they enable EMV.

• As we've seen, very few major retailers actually have. And of the ones that have, most of them have disabled NFC or worse, bought terminals that don't have it built-in. Plus, some smaller businesses seem to be reverting back to magstripe because they don't want to deal with the hassle. People may just forget about mobile payments altogether and may possibly get used to the additional time EMV takes, especially since a PIN isn't required.

2. Market it as though American consumers actually care about security and privacy all that much.

• I don't see that as a winning strategy because our banks' zero liability policies and a general lack of concern/nihilism towards privacy. Convenience is going to be the more convincing argument, but if people can still swipe Apple Pay doesn't add much. Especially since EMV's required for stuff like suppressing the signature/PIN prompt.

In-app purchases are a different story and Apple Pay does seem to be getting used far more for those than in-person here. We'll see.

 

[iGeek2014]

Strange thing happened a few weeks ago when I got my Watch at the Selfridges Apple watch store. when the sales person saw my iPhone she asked me if I wanted to use PAY. I did not think about it at the time as I was using my AMEX from another bank account, and said no thanks I want to use my AMEX card! then I thought about this afterwards as the watch with AppleCare is way over the 30 pounds limit I thought was in place? anyone used it in the UK to make big purchases over 30 pounds? do stores have no limits in the UK? hope this is not true! as PAY is very bad for my bank balance as I use it min 4 times a day just because it is so easy

In addition to OP's reply (and link above) when I bought my Apple Watch from the Regent Street store I used Apple Pay.

Was far too easy to spend £339 using my fingerprint!

 

[srshaw]

A few months ago this story would have been of interest. I have now swapped banks to First Direct. I'll bet Barclays are losing customers daily.