NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Barclays has no current plans to support Google’s Android Pay service or Samsung Pay because by adding the Contactless Mobile functionality to the Barclays Mobile Banking app, the company “removed the need to do something else,” a Barclays spokeswoman confirmed to NFC Times.
Just a few days ahead of the launch of Android Pay in the UK this week, Barclays announced its own HCE-based mobile payments service, Contactless Mobile. The service will build upon the functionality launched to its Barclaycard credit cardholders in January. The new service will be rolled out in June and phased over a number of days, which will make Contactless Mobile the first HCE service offered by a UK bank for both debit and credit cardholders.
The planned HCE service requires the user to have an NFC-enabled smartphone running Android 4.4 or above. Barclays says it has built its HCE and tokenization technology in-house, using alternate PANs. Barclays refrained from turning to Visa or smaller industry vendors for tokenization and HCE technology.