Developed by VocaLink, Zapp has already gained the support of many banks, including HSBC, First Direct, Nationwide, and Santander, all of whom are also supporting Apple Pay. The latest to join them is Barclays, which is hasn’t yet stated its support for Apple. Patrick Brusnahan writes

Zapp allows users to pay for purchases direct from their online bank account via a bank’s own mobile application. Corporate and consumer users of Barclays Pingit mobile money transfer service will be the first bank app live with Zapp when it launches in October.

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Utilising Pingit makes Zapp’s ‘Pay by Bank’ app the UK’s first total market mobile payment service, available to any consumer with a bank account or smartphone.

Peter Keenan, chief executive at Zapp, is very enthusiastic about this new collaboration between the two.

He said: "It goes without saying that Barclays has been one of the most innovative banks in the payments space. I very much see them as trailblazers in digital and the digital payments space, do for Barclays to essentially join our ecosystem is a bit vote of confidence in what we’re doing. They very much see what we’re doing as the future and they like the opportunities in will bring their retail and corporate customers."

While many have already supported Zapp, not only banks, but retailers such as Sainsbury’s and Asda, Barclays is one that is pushing Zapp further into the market.

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Keenan said: "We’ve already announced quite a large consortium of banks that have committed to getting behind Zapp, but Barclays coming to that takes overall support to just over 50% of all UK current accounts when we launch and the other banks go live. That’s a significant milestone to get over this early in the genesis of the company."

While currently Zapp remains an online solution only, Keenan does not see this as a limitation, but a differentiating factor at the moment.

He concluded: "It’s online purchases and m-commerce purchases and this is the one difference between us and Apple Pay. Apple Pay doesn’t have an e-commerce (buying in browser or desktop) solution and we will be the first ubiquitous mobile-based e-commerce solution out there. Our m-commerce solution is, we believe, by far a better solution and we have an in-app solution as well.

"In addition, our in-store solution launches at the end of the first quarter next year and we will be using NFC-based technology on that one."