Barclays

Five 'Barclays' stories November 2012 - July 2015

As Apple Pay goes live in UK, Barclays bank announces it will support the service after all

Benjamin Mayo Jul 14 2015 - 1:05 am PT

Apple Pay has gone live in the UK today with over 250,000 officially blessed locations (although Apple Pay will work at any standard NFC terminal) and seven banks. In the runup to the launch, the main holdout has been Barclays bank who instead promoted their alternative ‘bPay’ service.

Now, though, they have changed their tune. Over Twitter, Barclays announced that it is actually ‘really excited’ about Apple Pay and will add support for the service to Barclaycard debit and credit cards in future.

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UK bank Barclays delays Apple Pay as it seemingly thinks its own service can compete

Ben Lovejoy Jun 29 2015 - 4:35 am PT

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When Apple announced that Apple Pay would be coming to the UK in July, there was one major bank missing from the list: Barclays. While the company tweeted that in was in “constructive talks” with Apple, it seemed odd that all other major UK banks had managed to reach agreement while it hadn’t. We may now know the reason for this.

CNET reports that Barclays is hoping to persuade its customers to use its own bPay mobile payment service instead. Rather than embedding a virtual card in an iPhone app, the company wants people to apply a sticker to the back of their phone – or carry a keyfob or wear a wristband …
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All major banks support Apple Pay in the UK apart from Barclays, says negotiations ongoing

Benjamin Mayo Jun 9 2015 - 2:32 am PT

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UK bank Barclays is the only major holdout from the launch of Apple Pay in the UK. From next month, users with iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus or Apple Watch in the United Kingdom will be able to use the NFC mobile payments chip inside their iPhone to use Apple Pay.

Apple announced yesterday a whole swathe of partners, including Santander, HSBC and Lloyds. The notable omission from the ‘big four’ British banks is Barclays. Barclays’ Twitter support has come under fire in the aftermath from customers and has issued the following statement, which shows that all hope is not lost for Apple Pay for iPhone users who bank with Barclays.

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Analyst delivers the ultimate insult to Apple, calls it ‘the next Microsoft’

Ben Lovejoy Feb 20 2014 - 7:36 am PT

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Apple just might find itself shopping around for a new finance partner for its retail stores after Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes likened the company’s future potential to that of Microsoft.

financing-page-hero-2013 Downgrading AAPL from a buy to a hold, Reitzes said that while he was excited by the iWatch and Apple television ideas as a consumer, he didn’t see either driving double-digit growth. Quoted by Business Insider, he said:

We look at a valuation analogy vs. Microsoft from 2000 to about 2010 and see no precedent that large-size tech companies simply start to broadly outperform again after a tough year or two if the law of large numbers is catching up to them and margins have peaked.

Ouch! Still, it appears his pessimism is not universally shared.

UK Bank Barclays swoops up 8,500 iPads to improve customer support

Seth Weintraub Nov 24 2012 - 6:09 am PT

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This has to be a worrying trend for Microsoft, as its Windows OS powers every bank client transaction I’ve ever made. It doesn’t sound like the Surface was in the running either.

Barclays told us that staff had demanded the reassuringly expensive pad over any other shiny devices – clearly there are a lot of fanbois in the bank’s ranks.

She said the device will be used “to assist our branch colleagues to interact with customers, improving the customer experience”.

“We investigated a number of different tablet options and in this instance, we concluded that iPads were the best solution for their specific needs. We are now starting to use these across Barclays branches in the UK,” she said.

At around $500 a pop, the purchase would have been somewhere north of $4 million. This is not a huge transaction in the monster coffers of Apple, Inc., but it’s a bigger step in a new space for Apple.

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