Barclays to Merge BPay, Pingit Products as Banks Fend Off Apple

(Bloomberg) -- Barclays Plc is preparing to merge its wearable mobile payments product BPay with its more popular Pingit app, after it struggled to attract users.

The two products currently require retail customers to download and maintain two separate apps -- one for Pingit, which supports peer-to-peer transactions and international money transfers, and another for BPay, which lets people top up pre-paid credit onto wearable accessories for making contactless payments.

BPay launched a wearable band or key fob in 2014, prior to the U.K. roll out of Apple Pay. But while Pingit currently has 3.6 million users, BPay has users "in the high tens of thousands," a Barclays spokeswoman said in a statement.

The merger comes as retail banks try to adapt to the needs of consumers increasingly used to using their smartphones to manage their finances. Barclays Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley said in October the industry needs to defend its advantage from lighter-regulated tech companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc., calling payments “the battleground of finance over the next 15 years.”

Device-makers are paying attention to the trend too. Bloomberg reported last May that Apple and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. were developing a co-branded credit card as a way for the investment bank to deepen its push into consumer finance, and for the tech giant to play a bigger role in how its customers manage their finances.

Challenger banks such as the U.K.’s Monzo are also making it harder for Britain’s established consumer-banking industry, by creating digital-only retail products that only exist on smartphones.

Barclays partnered with a number of watch brands, including Guess and Timex, in a bid to capture the growing market for wearables. BPay users, including those with partner products featuring an embedded BPay chip, will be moved to the Pingit app, according to the statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nate Lanxon in London at nlanxon@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Giles Turner at gturner35@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

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