Barclays adds Siri P2P payments

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Barclays now allows its UK mobile banking customers with iPhones to make voice-enabled peer-to-peer (P2P) payments using Siri, Apple’s voice assistant. To use the feature, customers must opt in on Barclays iPhone app, according to The Telegraph. Once they do, they can initiate a send to any mobile contact or existing “payee” by asking Siri to send a given amount of pounds. The payment is then verified using Apple’s Touch ID before being processed and sent.

Barclays is introducing this feature at an opportune time. Voice payment adoption is low, but it’s on the rise. BI Intelligence forecasts that 31% of US adults will make a voice payment in 2022, up from roughly 8% last year — figures that should translate to the UK, a comparable market. And banks are in a particularly good position to capitalize, because they already count large, mobile-oriented user bases — Barclays alone has 5.9 million active mobile users — that place trust in them to provide digital payment services.

Moving into the voice payments space now could give Barclays an early-mover advantage. Currently, just 1% of consumers have made a voice-based P2P payment, as most providers don't yet offer them. But Barclays’ offering could be the ticket to adoption. Here’s why:

Siri is the most trusted voice payments provider. Security concerns continue to keep consumers wary about voice-based payment offerings. But among the options, Siri outstrips competition — 29% of respondents to a BI Intelligence survey trust Siri to securely make a payment, compared with just 17% who trust Amazon Alexa, the next most popular option. That trust could encourage consumers to test the feature.
Convenience is a major driver for consumers. Consumers interact with voice assistants largely to save time, and because it’s simple to. Likewise, consumers weigh convenience heavily when determining which service to use to make a P2P payment. Accessibility could push people to test Barclays' new feature, which could make the bank's offering a hit and a model for other payments- and commerce-based bank offerings across the board.

A revolution in payments and banking is beginning as virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa gain the abilities of cashiers, personal shoppers, and bank tellers.

Already, Siri can help users make peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers with Venmo, Alexa can pay off Capital One credit card bills, and Google Assistant can let users shop with their voice from nearby stores.

This is just the beginning. Today, 18 million US consumers have made a voice payment, and BI Intelligence projects that figure will quadruple over the next five years.

Dan Van Dyke, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on voice payments that:

Shares current and projected adoption of voice payments.
Outlines voice payments and banking integrations on the market.
Examines growth drivers and barriers to consumers' voice payments adoption.
Provides strategies for successfully deploying voice interfaces.

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