Digital Strategy of Barclays Bank for Open Banking

Exploration and Critical Assessment of the digital Strategy of Barclays Bank for Open
Banking.
Introduction
With operations in Europe, America, Australia, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, Barclays
Group PLC is a prominent worldwide financial services firm. Retail banking, credit cards,
corporate banking, investment banking, and asset management are among his specialties
(Teodoru, 2017). Global Retail Business, Corporate and Investment Banking, and Wealth
Management are the two clusters, each having multiple business divisions. And there's a
group centre with all of Barclays' crucial assistance. Barclays Bank PLC, the group's 300-
year-old business, operates in more than 50 countries, employs 147,500 people, and recently
merged with the Absa Group of South Africa (Philips, 2018).
The Group's business model focuses on executing an integrated global banking strategy,
which is the most effective way to serve clients and maximise risk-adjusted returns for
shareholders. As a result, the Group transports, loans, invests, and safeguards the funds of
over 38 million consumers and clients across the world (Guo, 2017). With a benchmark ratio
of 11%, it is the world's third biggest bank by assets and one of the world's major financial
services companies. By market capitalization, it is the third largest bank in the United
Kingdom. In May 2005, the bank relocated from Lombard Street in the City of London to
One Churchill Place in Canary Wharf, London, UK (Martin, 2013).
In the United Kingdom, Barclays is a universal bank. Providing goods and services to people,
corporations, investment banks, credit cards, and wealth management in the United Kingdom
and the United States. Barclays operates in more than 40 countries and employs about 85,000
people, with a history and experience dating back over 325 years. For clients and clients all
throughout the globe, Barclays transfers, loans, invests, and safeguards funds (Martin, 2013).
With the explicit approval of the bank's clients, open banking gives registered third-party
providers (TPPs) secure and standardised access to their bank accounts. It was created to
increase financial services sector competitiveness and innovation. Banks have created an
industry standard application programming interface in response to regulatory restrictions
(API). This enables the TPP to create apps and solutions connected to traditional bank
financial goods and services (Plaitakis and Staschen, 2020).

The availability of standardised and secure APIs for open banking services has sparked a rise
of novel payment services on the market, resulting in the formation of an open banking
ecosystem. Although most of this innovation is geared at individuals and small companies,
enterprises are an important part of this ecosystem (Stam, 2015).
Banks in the UK and Europe have been steadily upgrading the Open Banking API's
capabilities, performance, security, and stability over the last two years. The bank has made
these APIs available on TPP and FinTech businesses' developer portals (Minofiev, 2017).
Before the introduction of the regulated service Open Banking API, many fintech companies
were active in the financial services industry, such as personal financial dashboards for
individuals or accounting services for small and medium-sized businesses that use account
balance and transaction data. They were often accessed through screen captures or automatic
downloads of data from banks. This FinTech player was a pioneer in the Open Banking API
(Minofiev, 2017).
Several large banks, including Barclays, have begun offering account consolidation services
to retail and corporate customers. These aggregation services allow customers to view the
balances and transactions of different bank accounts in one application instead of logging into
multiple bank portals (Neusa Pinto, 2017). Many FinTech businesses, especially those in the
international money transfer market, are beginning to offer new payment initiation services,
such as Faster Payments in the United Kingdom. As the need for real-time, on-demand open
banking services becomes more widely recognised, new business models are expected to
develop, providing new possibilities for all actors in the sector (De Jong and van Dijk, 2015).
Customers in the United Kingdom will have unprecedented control over their personal
information and how it is used with the advent of open banking. Customers will be able to
share their account transaction data with other organisations and make payments through
them starting in 2018. Through its open banking API, Barclays actively participates in this
movement, producing services that make it simpler for consumers to live and optimise their
funds. Please visit the Barclays API Exchange if you want to use Barclays with your API
(Leeflang et al., 2014).
Entrepreneurship, according to Barclays, is not only necessary for economic recovery and
success, but it also need outside collaboration. Talent and expertise are increasingly flowing

across corporate and geographical barriers. To put it another way, coming up with new ideas
and concepts, as well as developing new goods and services, will be fine (Godwin, 2011).
Banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions must now disclose this
information securely with third-party providers, including FinTechs, who fulfil specific
regulatory requirements. All of this financial data sharing is made possible by a set of
computer programming concepts known as application programming interfaces (APIs),
which make it simple for these new financial services to "talk" to one another (Black et al.,
2020).
New technology trends adopted by Barclays Bank for online banking
This blog will discuss several new technology trends introduced by Barclays bank to enable
interaction between the bank and their money. This section covers:
1. Advanced self-service banking
2. APIs and banking
3. Biometrics
4. Enhanced cyber security
1. Advanced self-service banking
Barclays bank have been able to empower customers to be in control of their money and one
of the ways this have been done is through adoption of technology which help with self-
service banking. The use of self-service transactions happens on a regular basis, from
transferring money to checking balances online but technology now allows banks to offer
things such as:
a. Self-registration: Barclays allows customers who are new to the bank to open their
account straight from the Barclays App.
b. Loans: By using big data and machine learning, banks such as Barclays are able to
assess someone’s ability to pay back the loan, allow them to apply and take out loans
online.

c. E-signing: Complex products like mortgages can now be completed online, using
services such as DocuSign, meaning people don’t need to physically send paperwork
back and forth from the bank.
Barclays bank over the years, introduced effective techniques to enable prompt response to
customers. Times have changed, and so have customer’s expectations. It’s not enough to
expect customers to wait in line at branch and fill in forms. Adopting the self-service banking
have been cost effective for Barclays bank. Self-service has been enabled through the
introduction of Barclays app which enables transfer money between accounts and keep a
check on account balances. In fact, using its mobile app, Barclays raised the amount and
value of unsecured loans by 80% last year, with a third of unsecured personal loans
completed through Barclays digital channels, totalling £1 billion (Financial Times 2015). The
online banking is a form of self-service banking introduced that enables customers to do their
everyday banking tasks from their personal computer using the most advanced security
systems to keep details safe. Another aspect of self-service banking is the telephone banking,
which is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Customers can check their balance,
check transactions, pay bills and transfer money through the telephone banking method. The
last self-service method is the post office which enables all customers to withdraw or pay in
cash and check balances using their Barclays debit card and PIN at thousands of Post Office
branches across the country. All customers can also pay cheques into a Barclays account
using a personalised paying-in slip and a cheque deposit envelope. It will require two extra
working days for cheques to reach your Barclays accounts using the Post Office.
Barclays also excels at online customer connection and experience, which is another part of
digital channel management. The applications and services are rated 4 stars on the iOS and
Android markets, indicating that they meet and surpass the demands of potential consumers.
It's worth noting that less mature businesses tend to prioritise online client acquisition and
conversion above profitable objectives like retention and expansion (Chaffey 2010).
They were able to see that retail banking was transitioning towards an era of multi-channel
banking with a seamless movement across platforms and a more integrated experience for
consumers after examining the Barclays brand's cross-channel integration and development.
(TransformUK, 2015). It can also assist banks in cost-cutting by transferring sales from
branches to other digital channels. By criticizing Barclays' digital governance and change