Barclaycard

Barclaycard UK, Ltd.

Company type	Public Limited Company
Industry	Credit Card
Founder	Barclays PLC
Number of locations	Global
Products	Credit Cards
Number of employees	10,300
Divisions	Barclaycard Goldfish Inc.
Subsidiaries	Barclays
Website	www.barclaycard.com, www.barclaycard.co.uk

Barclaycard, part of Barclays Retail and Business Banking, is a global payment business. The Barclaycard was the first credit card introduced in the UK, coming into service in 1966. It enjoyed a monopoly until the introduction of the Access card in 1972.

Barclaycard later became part of the Visa network. Nowadays, Barclays offers both MasterCard and Visa versions. Barclaycard claims it is Europe's leading issuer of credit cards with 10.4 million customers in the UK and 10.8 million outside the UK. Barclaycard's main offices are in Northampton, along with several floors at Barclays' corporate HQ, One Churchill Place in Canary Wharf, London.

Barclaycard UK

Barclaycard has 10.4 million customers in the UK, issuing one in five UK credit cards. It is currently the leading UK credit card issuer.

It is based at 1234 Pavilion Drive in Northampton in a specially designed building where it employs approximately 3000 people. It is one of the main employers in Northampton. Some of Barclaycard UK customer service representatives appear to be based in India (see http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=21848).

Barclays were the only major British clearing bank not to issue cheque guarantee cards, instead allowing its customers to guarantee cheques with their Barclaycard (on the basis that if a customer was creditworthy for a Barclaycard they were also good for issuing cheques). This practice ended in 1985 with the introduction of relaxed lending rules and the introduction of the debit card Barclays Connect.

Timeline of Barclaycard UK

Original Barclaycard design (1966-1983)

• 1966: Barclaycard, the UK's first credit card, is launched
• 1977: Barclaycard becomes a founding member of the international Visa system
• 1986: Barclaycard launches first loyalty scheme
• 1990: Barclaycard MasterCard launched
• 1997: Barclaycard is the first UK credit company to allow bills to be paid over the Internet
• 2008: Barclaycard purchases Goldfish, Discover Financial Services' UK credit card division.
• 2011: Barclaycard, in partnership with Orange, launches Contactless mobile payments - the first in EU, second after Turkey in Europe
• 2012: Barclaycard remove their Freedom rewards scheme after just two years

The Barclaycard commercials

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Rowan Atkinson starred in a series of Barclaycard adverts. The first advert involved Atkinson's character, spy Richard Latham, entering HQ to be told about his next mission. He is given a Barclaycard. The advert ends with Richard coming out of a sentry box with an oblivious sentry guard.

In the adverts following, Richard is accompanied by a protégé called Bough. Bough is the person who approves of Barclaycard and tells Richard of its benefits, much to Richard's disagreement. In the adverts, Richard burns the end of a rug, breaks a china tea pot for a wedding present (and disturbs the photo of the wedding), and, in one particularly well-known advert, confuses a head honcho from MI5 for a plumber at a crime scene. One ad gives Latham the immortal line: "Barclaycard? This man's in no state to go shopping!"

The other well-known thing about the advert is the theme tune. This advert was the basis for the film Johnny English, which also starred Rowan Atkinson (the name of his character was changed from Richard Latham to Johnny English).

In Autumn 2008 to promote contactless payment technology and a change in branding, Barclaycard released a campaign featuring a fantasy water slide. Conceived by creative agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty and shot in São Paulo, the TV advert feature a man (played by Robert Wilfort) leaving work via a slide and passing various contactless payment sites on his way home. The TV advert was directed by Peter Thwaites and set to The Bellamy Brothers' "Let Your Love Flow", which, due to the resultant popularity, re-entered the UK Singles Chart and peaked at No. 21.

A second advert was released in January 2010, featuring a man travelling to work on a roller coaster. It is set to Boston's "More Than a Feeling".

Barclaycard International

Barclaycard operates in over 60 countries and has 10.8 million customers outside the UK.

Timeline of Barclaycard International

• 1991: Barclaycard launches in Germany
• 1997: Barclaycard launches its Dollar Card
• 1998: Barclaycard launches in France
• 1999: Barclaycard launches in Spain and Greece
• 2001: Barclaycard launches in Botswana
• 2002: Barclaycard launches in Italy
• 2003: A collaborative credit card agreement with Standard Bank in South Africa is launched
• 2004: Barclaycard launches in Ireland, Portugal and Egypt; acquires U.S. credit card issuer Juniper Financial Corporation
• 2007: Irish portfolio is sold to Bank of Scotland (Ireland)
• 2007: Barclaycard launches in India and Dubai

Acquisitions

Providian

In 2002 Barclaycard took over the UK wing of the American Company Providian National Bank, known as Monument, when it was sold off due to financial irregularities of its American parent company. Providian's former base in Crawley (West Sussex) was fully part of the Barclaycard group, mainly catering for the very lower end of the credit card market. This targeting of the less affluent has created a lot of controversy as invariably the people targeted have existing financial problems. Barclaycard sold the Monument business and premises to Compucredit in 2007.

Egg

In March 2011, Barclays announced that it would be buying the British credit card business arm of Egg from Citigroup for an undisclosed price. At the time of the announcement, Barclays claimed that the credit card assets consisted of 1.15 million accounts with approximately £2.3bn of gross receivables. They intend to integrate those customers within their own credit card arm. At the time of the announcement, Citi said it was "committed to working with Barclays on a seamless transfer of the customer accounts, ensuring continuation of the high level of service to which customers are accustomed". The deal was expected to be completed within the first half of 2011.

Barclaycard products

Contactless

Barclays and Barclaycard have been providing contactless debit and credit cards since 2007 and, since May 2011, contactless mobile phones, as well as the terminals that accept contactless payments. Barclays and Barclaycard have issued over 11.4 million contactless-enabled cards.

Barclays and Barclaycard provide contactless terminals for around 50,000 outlets in the UK, including:

• Wembley Arena
• Slug and Lettuce
• Prêt A Manger
• Subway
• Little Chef
• EAT.
• The Co-operative
• Wilkinson
• M6 Toll
• Starbucks
• Greggs the Bakers

Mobile payments

On 20 May 2011, Barclaycard and Orange launched ‘Quick Tap’ - the UK’s first contactless mobile phone payments service, allowing customers to make contactless purchases on the high street with their mobile phone for the first time. The launch means that, in addition to using contactless cards or chip and PIN, consumers can tap their mobile phone on a contactless reader at tills in over 50,000 stores to make purchases £15 and under.

The service is available to Orange customers who use a ‘Quick Tap’ enabled handset. Barclaycard and Orange launched with a ‘Quick Tap’ enabled version of the Samsung Tocco Lite.

Other elements of Barclaycard

In addition to Barclaycard UK and Barclaycard International, there is also Barclaycard Payment Acceptance (Merchant Acquiring) and Barclaycard Commercial (Corporate Issuing and Partnership Issuing). Until November 2008, Barclaycard Payment Acceptance was known as Barclaycard Business, previous to which it was known as Barclaycard Merchant Services (BMS). As a Merchant Acquirer, it enjoys around 38% of the UK Acquiring Business and offers a number of channels including internet payments (ePDQ) and small merchant bank-owned terminals (PDQ Terminals) normally provided by Ingenico (formally Fortronic).

It teamed up with London's Transport for London to combine a credit card with an Oyster card—called OnePulse—which was launched in the autumn of 2007.

External links

• Barclaycard Webpage
• Barclaycard Football
• Barclaycard Facts and Benefits