Barclays has today announced its own contactless payment service, offering the ability for true instant payments that work even when the application is closed.
The new service ‘Contactless Mobile’ will utilise the NFC capability of your smartphone to allow PIN-free payments up to £30 and protected payments up to £100. This makes Barclays the first UK bank to roll out its own dedicated mobile pay system, beating competitors such as HSBC and Santander, who chose to use the third-party application Zapp rather than develop their own native app.
The service is managed through the ‘Barclays Mobile Banking’ application, which will combine both the users bank accounts and contactless accounts into a single place. A big feature of the service is the applications’ ability to automate the setup process, providing that the user has an existing account with the bank. The app will check to see which cards are eligible and setup the system for you, as opposed to competitor versions where the user needs to input details manually. According to Barclays, the contactless service will work even when the app is not running, meaning you’re free to fire away transactions much like a conventional contactless bank card.
‘Contactless Mobile’ will be available in June and released over a number of days. According to Barclays, the service should work in any of the 400,000 contactless payment locations around the UK. Customers will be contacted by Barclays when the service becomes available and prompted to download the application, where they will find out if they’re eligible for the service.
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