Barclays puts full online banking on mobile app

Barclays has launched a mobile banking app with similar functionality to its full online banking platform. It follows the mass adoption of its Pingit app, which allows users to make and receive payments with just a mobile number.

The Barclays Mobile Banking app is free and available on Apple and Android smartphones. The app will allow customers to view their balances and the 30 most recent transactions, make transfers between accounts and pay bills.

The launch follows the massive take-up of the bank's Pingit mobile payments app, which had more than 900,000 downloads in the first four months of its availability.

The move follows Barclays’s work on a private cloud that will underpin the app, as well as a raft of cloud-based mobile banking services that are set to follow.

Speaking at the launch of Pingit, Shaygan Kheradpir, COO for Barclays retail and business banking, said it will release more apps that will sit on a “mobile money platform”.

This all sits in a private cloud, which means that rather than using a website that sits on top of core IT infrastructure to enable mobile payments, the apps plug directly into it.

Sean Gilchrist, managing director of Barclays digital, said the Barclays Mobile Banking app is the next step in the bank’s mobile banking service. “The simplicity of our new app is great news and makes the banking experience even easier and quicker for our customers,” he said.

The Barclays Mobile Banking app is initially available to those aged 16 and over on Apple and Android phones, with plans to release on BlackBerry very soon. The app can be downloaded from Apple App Store and Google Play.