Barclays share price: Bank launches new contactless payment options

Barclays’s (LON:BARC) has unveiled three new wearable devices — a wristband, a key fob and a sticker — which can be used to make contactless transactions at over 300,000 locations in the UK.

Barclaycard, the British bank’s credit card arm, launched its bPay band – effectively a contactless bank card in the form of a wristband – last year. The wearable devices are connected to a digital wallet, to which consumers can add funds through the online bPay site or mobile app. Purchases of less than £20 can be made waving the band across the merchant’s sales terminal. Under current law, transactions of £20 or more require the customer to enter their pin to validate the transaction. Barclays’ three new contactless payment gadgets can be used by anyone with a UK-registered Visa or MasterCard debit or credit card and bought online or in high street stores from next month.
“The launch of our bPay band last year was an evolutionary step for the business, with highly positive customer feedback,” Mike Saunders, managing director of digital consumer payments at Barclaycard said, adding that the lender was building on this success with the expanded bPay proposition.
The launch comes at the same time as ApplePay arrives in the UK, allowing people to make purchases through applications on their iPhone or Apple Watch and pay at contactless points by tapping their device against a card reader. Barclays is the only major high street bank not to sign up to the ApplePay service, preferring instead to develop its own digital payment service.
Barclays’s share price fell this morning, amid a wider plunge in the stock market. By 10:31 BST, the FTSE 100-listed bank had declined 1.89 percent to 267.20p.
As of 11:03 BST, Monday, 29 June, Barclays share price is 267.75p.