Retailers will be able to accept these transactions through the new Buyit application.
Barclays’ has taken a new step forward to prove itself as a banking industry innovator by unveiling a new offering to customers in the United Kingdom that allow them to use mobile payments.
These transactions will be based on the use of QR codes printed on various forms of advertisements.
In order to use the mobile payments, the Buyit app is required. It allows customers to scan QR codes on ads in order to make purchases. It is drawn from the popularity of Barclay’s previously launched app Pingit. That app was released earlier this year. The new application, however, helps to extend smartphone transactions beyond the Pingit person to person support so that retailers can also take part.
Barclays’ has high hopes that this mobile payments offering will have a similar impact on its stocks to the last one.
According to one recent report, the company has been maintaining a price estimate of $22 for the stock, and that is currently riding around 20 percent above the market price where it currently stands. U.K. regulators have raised concerns about the banking industry’s capital shortfalls in light of the impact that the European region’s slowdown among banking institutions. That could help to explain the price difference that has been observed.
Barclays is hoping to keep itself at the head of the game by remaining a technology leader. Mobile payments offerings is a central part of that effort. It has previously achieved this type of solid success through the use of ATMs, which are now ubiquitous. The organization has also been leading the way in other contactless transaction solutions.
It was Barclays that launched the very first mobile payments solution in the country. The Pingit app allows customers to send money to one another using only the cell number of the recipient and without the need for the sender to know any of the recipient’s account details. The service is available for free for everyone in the United Kingdom, provided that they have a bank account and a smartphone with which to make the funds exchange.
These barcodes are being increasingly used on grave markers to help say more about the individual buried beneath.
Although QR codes are found most often in mobile marketing and on product packaging to allow consumers to gain a larger amount of information about what is being sold, cemeteries have picked up on the concept and are attaching them to tombstones to turn a very limited space into a virtually limitless opportunity for sharing more about the deceased.
These smartphone friendly barcodes can be scanned through the use of any free reader app.
In the latest issue of the Online Genealogy Newsletter, Dick Eastman published a piece entitled “Genealogists have recently been finding QR Codes on tombstones.” Within it, he explained what the barcodes are and how smartphone users would be able to scan them and be redirected to a specific webpage through the browser of the device.
In the case of tombstones, QR codes can redirect visitors to a cemetery to a page about the deceased.
This feature is becoming quite popular in the cemeteries and memorials industry. Through the use of QR codes, families and friends can build a webpage that provides a great deal more information about their loved one than one or two words as well as a couple of dates and a name. In fact, it opens the opportunity to share pictures, stories, videos, and even audio recordings. It could contain a detailed biography of the person and can provide visitors to the cemetery with the chance to leave their condolences for the family.
Some QR codes also allow cemetery visitors to share their own memories with a feature that allows for photo uploads, text entry, and other types of content creation and sharing. Typically, though, these barcodes lead to a site that is entirely managed by the family of the person who has died, giving them complete control over what is posted there.
Though there were a few cemeteries that led the way with QR codes in the United States, such as a small handful in Washington state and Pennsylvania, this has rapidly expanded to the point that they are becoming quite common in many states. Moreover, they are also available in the United Kingdom and across much of Europe, as well as in China. Recently a war memorial cemetery in Wales introduced the barcodes – a launch that was celebrated with a member of the royal family in attendance.
