Barclays extends Smartphone cheque scheme
05/12/2014
One million more people will be invited to take part in a scheme, which allows people to pay a cheque into their bank account by taking a photo of it on their smart phone.
Barclays, who are running the scheme, have only made this available to a few thousand customers so far, but plan on extending the scheme to one million more customers thanks to its success.
Customers who are offered this service will no longer have to go into branch to deposit a cheque, and will instead simply take a photo of the cheque they want to deposit on their smartphone before filling in an electronic deposit form and pressing send. The money will be available to customers instantly, but the cheque will take one to two days to clear.
The Government have backed this project, and Barclays will soon be trialling the technology with its corporate clients, which would hopefully save businesses both time and money when paying in customers cheques.
Barclays have reported that the scheme has received extremely positive feedback from the users who currently have access to it, with 90% of customers saying it enabled them to do everything they wanted.
The new technology, launched earlier this year, is currently only available to customers using an iPhone.
Barclays said that it planned to extend the pilot to Android-based systems shortly.
Plans to discontinued cheques by 2018 were scrapped a few years ago after the UK Payments Council faced an outcry from MPs, small businesses, charities and pensioner lobby groups, who said the needs of millions of vulnerable people were being ignored.
Barclays plan to launch “video banking”, face-to-face video calls with Barclays staff members from their smartphone, tablet or computers, in the near future.
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