Barclays adds Apple Pay support 9 months after UK launch

After months of waiting in the wings, Barclays customers in the UK can now provision bank-issued cards for use with Apple Pay on compatible devices, as the bank finally flipped the switch on Apple's mobile payments service.

A number of iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch owners woke up to discover the Apple Pay addition on Tuesday, with multiple Barclays account holders reporting successful card activations like the example seen above, posted to Twitter by UK magazine MacFormat.

As a major UK bank, Barclays was expected to be among the first card-issuing institutions to offer Apple Pay support, but the firm was notably absent from the launch list Apple announced at WWDC 2015. Barclays received a number of complaints from customers, some of whom threatened to leave the bank over the matter. The firm's CEO of Personal and Corporate Banking division Ashok Vaswani issued a statement one day after Apple's announcement, saying the company was working to add Apple Pay to its existing mobile payments offerings.

Apple's payments service went live in the UK last July with partner companies American Express, First Direct, HSBC, Nationwide, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander and Ulster Bank, while Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland were added as part of a second rollout in September.

Seemingly late to the game, Vaswani confirmed an application to the Apple Pay program in October, telling customers to expect service activation in early 2016. Most recently, the executive released a statement in January suggesting Apple Pay support would ultimately arrive in March.

Apple first announced its mobile payments solution in 2014, touting the system's easy to use touchless NFC interface and integration with Touch ID. Following a U.S. rollout, Apple Pay availability expanded to the UK last summer before reaching Canada and Australia a few months later. Most recently, Apple Pay reached China in February, with early figures suggesting more than 3 million activations in just two days.

24 Comments

AMcKinlay21 125 comments · 14 Years

About 8 years ago

Well better late than never I suppose...

laytech 341 comments · 15 Years

And still the Australian bank cartel keep it out of Australia. At least American Express offer it, one good reason not to use my bank card.

I struggle to understand how a country so advanced with chip and pin and NFC payments is so far behind with implementing this technology. Oh wait, of course I do, banks protecting banks, and not giving a monkey's for their customer base. Profits for shareholders.

xbit 399 comments · 9 Years

At last! I would have swapped away from Barclays ages ago but the cashback deal on my card is unbeatable by anything on the market today.

cnocbui 3612 comments · 17 Years

laytech said:

And still the Australian bank cartel keep it out of Australia. At least American Express offer it, one good reason not to use my bank card.

I struggle to understand how a country so advanced with chip and pin and NFC payments is so far behind with implementing this technology. Oh wait, of course I do, banks protecting banks, and not giving a monkey's for their customer base. Profits for shareholders.

As a shareholder, I fully support their position of not paying a freeloader part of the profits generated from the infrastructure I paid for.

teejay2012 406 comments · 12 Years

cnocbui said:

laytech said:

And still the Australian bank cartel keep it out of Australia. At least American Express offer it, one good reason not to use my bank card.

I struggle to understand how a country so advanced with chip and pin and NFC payments is so far behind with implementing this technology. Oh wait, of course I do, banks protecting banks, and not giving a monkey's for their customer base. Profits for shareholders.

As a shareholder, I fully support their position of not paying a freeloader part of the profits generated from the infrastructure I paid for.

If I read your post correctly, you feel that Apple is the freeloader? I suppose as 'a shareholder', you have no concerns about security and never had one of your credit cards compromised? In the real world, consumers have and it is not fun to be a victim of identity theft in which your cc played a part. No matter. Consumers will pressure your bank to add Apple pay and the banks will increase their profit by offering merchants and customers better security. Stop being so unnecessarily negative.