It only took nine months, but Barclays customers can finally add a Barclays card to Apple Pay. While Barclays was initially expected to be one of the first to offer support for Apple’s contactless payments system when it first went live nine months ago, but the bank was noticeably absent from the list of supporting banks on opening day.
Multiple iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch users who bank with Barclays are reporting successful card activations, such as the one shown in the screenshot above, tweeted by UK publication MacFormat.
Apple Pay went live in the UK last July, and firms offering immediate support included American Express, First Direct, HSBC, Nationwide, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander and Ulster Bank. Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland were added in a second wave in September.
When Barclays customers realized their bank would not be supporting Apple Pay when it initially arrived in the UK, the institution began receiving a number of complaints from customers, many of who threatened to take their business elsewhere. This led the firm’s CEO of Personal and Corporate Banking division Ashok Vaswani to issue a statement saying the company was working to add Apple Pay support for its clients.
October saw Vaswani telling customers to expect service activation in early 2016. Then January saw another release, indicating support would arrive in March. The bank was only a few days off schedule. (Or nine months off schedule. It’s all in your point of view. -Ed.)
Barclays cardholders can set up Apple Pay via the Wallet app on their iOS device running iOS 8.1 or later. Cards can be scanned using the device’s back-facing camera, or added manually by tapping the “Add Credit or Debit Card” option. Then just follow the handy on-screen verification steps.
