Apple Pay has finally gone live for customers of Barclays, a.k.a. the last of the U.K. holdout banks which didn’t support Apple’s mobile payments service when it arrived in the United Kingdom last July.
That now brings the total number of major U.K. banks and credit card issuers to offer Apple Pay to 16, including Barclays, TSB, Tesco Bank, Lloyds, Natwest, Santander, Nationwide, RBS, Ulster Bank, MBNA, American Express, HSBC, and First Direct.
It’s not known exactly why it took so long for Barclays to start offering Apple Pay, although for a long time it encouraged customers to purchase its bPay devices for mobile payments — which involved a band or key fob.
Barclays first revealed that it would be adding Apple Pay “within the next 60 to 75 days” back in January, although that would have put the launch no later than March 27.
Still, better late than never! The bank still says it has no plans to adopt Android Pay, though.
