When Apple Pay officially went live in the UK almost a year ago, it was supported by every major bank except Barclays, which waited a further nine months before joining in. The reason was because Barclays was trying to push its own mobile payment service, bPay – which is actually just a contactless card chip embedded into a variety of physical objects.
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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