Barclays is looking to extend the reach of mobile payments with a new feature that turns everyday advertising into a point of sale. Building on the success of its Pingit app, the bank is introducing “Buyit,” a capability that lets users scan QR codes on ads and complete purchases instantly. The move reflects a broader push to make payments more seamless and embedded in daily life, removing the extra steps between discovery and checkout. As UK banks continue to expand their mobile offerings, Buyit could mark another step toward closing the gap with more advanced digital payment markets.
In an interview with Finextra, Richard Martin, Barclays’s director of cash management, said Barclays customers will soon have the additional capability through the bank’s Pingit mobile application to make purchases by scanning QR codes on advertisements.
Pingit, which Barclays launched in 2012, has been widely successful and served as a catalyst for other British banks to deliver effective mobile banking and payment services. The Pingit application was so successful that Barclays quickly lowered the minimum age and increased the amount of funds consumers could send daily.
The new mobile payment capability, dubbed Buyit, will run on the Faster Payments network and will allow people to scan a QR code on magazines and billboard advertisements and make quick purchases through a pre-populating a field with payments information. Consumers would then receive a text message confirmation and the purchased goods are delivered a few days later.
Describing the service, Martin said:
“You can scan that QR code, you can immediately be ordering the goods that pop up automatically pre-populated, your delivery details are sent straight through to the retailer, two days later the goods are delivered. You don’t have to go home and go online to purchase the items later, you can chose to purchase right there and then.”
Overall, the British mobile banking and payments landscape generally trails the United States and other countries in terms of available services. The need for British banks to play catch up was detailed in a Payments Journal perspective earlier this year. Pingit served as a major catalyst for mobile banking in the United Kingdom and Buyit could do the same for mobile payments. Its potential success will be interesting to monitor.
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