After some months playing the part of the holdout, Barclays has joined the rest of the U.K.’s big banks and thrown its lot in with Apple Pay. The bank had been slow to sign on with Apple’s mobile payments platform, instead choosing to favor focusing on the Zapp mobile commerce system by VocaLink.
A change in the offing, however, has been apparent since the bank’s head of personal and corporate banking, Ashok Vaswarni, tweeted about its “coming soon” status in response to a customer question.
“With Barclaycard and Barclays bringing Apple Pay to our customers, we can now offer the widest choice of ways to make and take payments in a way that’s most convenient for them,” noted Amer Sajed, interim CEO of Barclaycard.
Though Barclays has officially signed on with Apple, it is not yet clear if that support will extend to rival service Android Pay. The current conventional wisdom is that Barclays will continue to hold off on Android and instead keep its focus on its own Barclaycard app, which comes preloaded with both NFC and HCE support.
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