Apple Pay has gone live in the UK today with over 250,000 officially blessed locations (although Apple Pay will work at any standard NFC terminal) and seven banks. In the runup to the launch, the main holdout has been Barclays bank who instead promoted their alternative ‘bPay’ service.
Now, though, they have changed their tune. Over Twitter, Barclays announced that it is actually ‘really excited’ about Apple Pay and will add support for the service to Barclaycard debit and credit cards in future.
The institution offered no firm dates as to when it would add Apple Pay integration but at least it means Barclays bank customers can be assured that they will be able to use Apple Pay eventually.
We are really excited about the launch of Apple Pay and will bring Barclays debit cards and Barclaycard credit cards to Apple Pay in future.
— Barclays UK (@BarclaysUK) July 14, 2015
On a related note, some UK customers have been disappointed that HSBC and First Direct do not support Apple Pay on launch day in the UK, despite being advertised for the last month on Apple’s website as launch partners. For some reason, the rollout at HSBC and First Direct has been delayed for a few weeks. HSBC customers can expect Apple Pay to launch for them on the 28th July. There is no firm date for First Direct customers other than an assurance that Apple Pay is ‘coming soon’.
