In a move that will directly put the Barclays in competition with the Goldman Sachs’s online retain bank Marcus, the company seems to have launched a retail account that will offer a low-cost and digital-only bank for the U.S. customers.
Barry Rodrigues, cards and payments head, Barclays International, reported that the bank would leverage Barclays’ UK expertise and knowledge in creating current account for its U.S. based online bank, that is already offering the savings account, credit cards, and loans to over 13 million customers.
According to Barry Rodrigues the more number of aspects of relationship a customer will have with the bank, the happier the customer will be. He further revealed that the firm is planning to launch checking, and is in the process of developing and testing to soon launch the digital bank in the market by next year.
As reported in the Financial Times, improving its consumer-focused account will help Barclays to boost its USD 13.6 billion of retail deposits in the U.S. digital banking space and would further help the company diversify the Barclays International division’s funding.
The Barclays International division, as per sources familiar with the knowledge of the matter, has housed investment banking and international retail operations since the British government forced the large-scale banks to ringfence their national retail operations.
According to authentic reports, in the United States, Barclays apparently has an overall USD 25 billion loan book, with a major share of USD 20 billion for its co-branded card customers and remaining USD 5 billion to its online bank borrowers.
It has been reported that the online bank has so far loaned money only to the existing deposit and card customers. However, from the month of November, the bank will be appearing on aggregators sites and offering loans on the open market.
