Barclays Takes Cash Contactless

U.K. bank Barclays announced its contactless mobile service on Monday (Nov. 21), enabling customers to withdraw up to £100 in-branch using just their Android mobile device or contactless debit card.

After a pilot in the North, Barclays confirmed that service will be rolled out to more than 180 branch locations in 2017 and will be available on 600 in-branch machines.

CEO of Barclays U.K. Ashok Vaswani said: “We are always looking for new ways to make our customers’ lives easier and their finances even more secure. Our customers now expect to be able to use their smartphones to make their everyday purchases. We want taking out cash to be just as easy. With Contactless Cash, customers can quickly and securely take out money with just a tap of their smartphones – a first for the U.K.”

When using the service, customers can either use an Android smartphone to input their desired withdraw amount and PIN on Barclays Mobile Banking and tap to withdraw or tap and complete on a machine using an Android device or a contactless debit card.

“These are machines that we have designed ourselves, so they’re unique,” Vaswani told The Telegraph. “These are very intelligent machines; they do a hell of a lot more than what an average ATM does.”

The launch comes as the use of contactless continues to be a hit across Europe.

In a report dubbed “Global Payment Cards Data and Forecast,” the consulting firm RBR found that one in five card payments will be contactless by 2021. That’s an increase from one in 20 as of 2015.

The study shows that Europe is continuing to lead the growth in terms of contactless payment card issuance and usage. At the end of 2015, there were 346 million contactless cards in Europe, up 41 percent from the year earlier. Growth in usage increased threefold to 3.7 billion during the year, noted the report.