Wednesday 7 October 2015

Barclays to bring Apple Pay to the UK in the new year

Ok so I've been creating a bit of a fuss over this, but after writing to the CEO of Barclays Retail Banking in the UK, Ashok Vaswani, I got quite a swift reply back confirming their plans to launch in the new year.

I wrote a previous post about my frustrations with Barclays over their ignorance for choosing not to be part of Apple Pay. The only response from Barclays on this has been the following:
We’re working through the detail of implementation and will make an announcement on timing in due course
This has been the response from them over the past couple of months and as you can imagine is beginning to sound long in the tooth and many customers have had enough and are switching to rival banks.

I originally wrote to Ashok this morning in an email:
I am writing to you to complain about the complete lack of attention and care you have paid to your customers over the Apple Pay situation you seem to be ignoring. 
You only have to look at comments on your social media output to see that most customers want Apple Pay and are prepared to switch banks for it. Why don't you just get on the Apple Pay train before you get left behind?
 Just now I received a reply:
We have signed up for ApplePay and will launch it very early in the New Year. We truly value your custom and hope that you continue to bank with us particularly since we are launching this shortly.
So it's quite clear the rumours of the 'imminent' arrival are not quite accurate and it would appear customers wanting Apple Pay will either have to sit it out for a few (many?) months or switch banks.