Barclays Android contactless payments will give the bank’s customers another way to make purchases with their smartphones while Barclays continues to hold out against Apple Pay. The bank plans to allow customers with NFC-enabled Android phones to activate contactless payment capabilities through its own mobile application and make purchases at more than 300,000 locations across the UK.
Barclays is also introducing an instant virtual card replacement service for customers whose physical cards are lost or stolen. By downloading a replacement card directly to the app, customers will be able to continue making contactless payments without waiting for a new physical card to arrive.
With the bank still refusing to fall in line with Apple Pay, Barclays has announced that it will become the first UK bank to allow customers to make contactless payments from any NFC-enabled Android phone. According to Barclays, next month customers will be able to activate the bank’s Android app for NFC, enabling them to make payments at over 300,000 locations in the UK. Furthermore Barclays says that in a UK market first it will provide a real-time replacement service that will see the bank to replace physical payment cards with a virtual card to be downloaded instantly onto the app.
Barclays Expands Its Mobile Payment Capabilities
Commenting on the launch of the service, Mike Saunders, managing director of digital consumer payments at Barclaycard said,
“Barclaycard has a strong history of innovation and we’re constantly looking for new ways to revolutionize payments. These new features transform Android phones into a mobile hub for our customers allowing them to manage their account on the go, make contactless payments up to £100 and have a lost or stolen card instantly re-issued – letting them continue to make contactless payments straightaway.”
Mobile Payment Choices Could Create Consumer Confusion
Given that Barclays will eventually support Apple Pay, in the relatively near future Barclay customers could soon find themselves inundated with mobile payment choices. For P2P payments, Barclay customers could use the bank’s Pingit application or the industry led, Paym and for payments at the POS, they will have a choice between Apple Pay, this new service, Android and or Samsung Pay and the industry led Zapp mobile payment service. Choice is often a good thing, but at times too much choice can lead to weak consumer adoption, something Barclays might have just brought on themselves.
Developing its own contactless payment capabilities gives Barclays greater control over the mobile payment experience while providing Android customers with an alternative to third-party wallets. Features such as instant virtual card replacement could also demonstrate how mobile payment technology can provide benefits beyond simply replacing a physical card at checkout.
At the same time, the growing number of competing services could make the mobile payments landscape increasingly complicated for consumers. Barclays Android contactless payments will compete for attention alongside bank-led, industry-led, and technology-company payment services. While greater choice can benefit customers, Barclays and other providers will need to make the value of each service clear if they hope to encourage widespread adoption.
Overview by Tristan Hugo-Webb, Associate Director, Global Payment Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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