Barclays Bank continues its ‘digital revolution’ by announcing its intention to be the first UK bank to offer a new one-to-one video service to a selection of its customers as of the 8th December, enabling them to communicate securely with bank staff from their mobile phones, tablets or laptop computers at anytime of the day.
The ‘Skype-style’ service will initially be provided to Barclays premier account holder’s, those with more than £150,000 with the bank, and then rolled out to mortgage, business and investment customers from early 2015 - followed by all retail customers.
The new video banking service has been hailed as a ‘watershed moment’ in UK banking by Steven Cooper, CEO of personal banking at Barclays. Mr Cooper commented that “it would mean banks interact with customers completely on their terms, rather than ours”, he went on to add that “where possible, customers will be connected to a staff member they have already spoken to”.
Whilst Barclays hailed the benefits that video banking would provide, critics and campaigners warned the banks campaign to close branches in favour of continued development of new gadgets risked alienating many of its elderly customers.
Mr Cooper did refer to branch opening hours, suggesting that the video service itself would help to provide customers with a face-to-face experience, adding that “while many of our customers are increasingly using digital channels to complete routine transactions, for the important moments, you just can't beat face-to-face conversations, yet traditional branch opening hours don't always give customers that choice.”
On Monday 8th December Barclays’ wealthier ‘Premier’ customers will receive an email inviting them to use their new video banking service. With other banks set to follow suit and race firmly on to develop the next generation of super-fast mobile ‘5G’ networks video banking is set to become an instrumental tool for the banking sector.