Barclays Expands Quick Tap and Launches PayTag
- Barclays’s issuing arm, Barclaycard launches PayTag: a new solution relying on contactless stickers to enable Barclaycard Visa cardholders with no NFC compatible mobile phone to make mobile contactless transactions.
- This deployment only concerns Barclays customers and should start in the next few months (and even in the weeks to come with a small number of customers). Available at no cost, the stickers have been thought as extensions of the traditional Barclaycard cards.
- Meanwhile, the range of its Quick Tap mobile wallet (launched in May 2011 and managed in partnership with Orange) has been extended. From now on, the service applies to all cardholders regardless of their bank. Top-ups have been limited to 150 pounds and the Quick Tap app should allow them to access their transaction history.
- Until recently, only few mobile devices could support Quick Tap; however, Orange has committed to propose the app on a wider range of Android-based Smartphones very soon.
Source: Barclays press release
- These initiatives are announced as several UK-based retailers already accept contactless card payments (including McDonalds, Boots, WH Smith, Tesco and ASDA) and as TfL is envisaging to have adapted its entire London transportation network to enable acceptance of both contactless card and mobile payments by end 2013.
- In May 2011, Quick Tap was the first NFC service to be commercially launched. However, it was only available on the Samsung Tocco Lite NFC device which significantly hindered its adoption. Barclays’s stickers are less expensive and, as such, they may help lift up mass deployments.
- Finally, it should be reminded that Barclaycard predicts that three billion pounds worth of purchases will be made with mobile phones in the UK in 2016. These initiatives are also in line with forecast by Pew Internet and American Life Project and the University Elon School of Communications, indicating that mobile NFC should increasingly be used and even outrun card use by 2020. The same survey also underlines the part of issuing banks in favouring this adoption.