Barclaycard Finally Reveals Apple Pay Competitor

Barclays has released a new mobile app which offers customers the ability to make NFC and contactless payments using their smartphones.

The mybarclaycard app, which is free to download for Android devices now, allows those with Barclaycard credit cards to make NFC payments of up to £30.

Apparently users won’t need to launch the Barclaycard app itself to use the contactless function, which can even be used to buy goods up to the value £100 in some stores when entering a PIN code as well.

Speedy

Barclays had come under criticism for being one of the few British banks to not yet offer Apple Pay functionality to its customers, more than six months since the service launched in the UK.

However speculation back in October predicted that the bank would be launching Apple’s service early in 2016, following an unexpected email response to a customer complaint, in which a senior Barclays executive said that Apple Pay would soon be coming to its users.

“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,” Barclays CEO of Personal and Corporate Banking Ashok Vaswani told customer Mike Jobson.

Barclays had thought to be reluctant to push the use of Apple Pay to its customers due to its ongoing support for its own bPay mobile payment technology.

Following a number of trials, bPay finally went public across the UK earlier this year with the launch of three new devices – a wristband, fob and sticker, which are now on sale to anyone with a registered Visa or MasterCard debit or credit card.

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