(Bloomberg) -- Barclays Plc is planning a U.S. retail current account that aims to combine the low costs of a digital-only lender with the security of dealing with a major financial institution, the Financial Times reported.
The project will put the British bank into competition with Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s new Marcus brand, a consumer bank for the U.K. market, the FT reported Sunday, citing the head of cards and payments at Barclays International, Barry Rodrigues. A spokeswoman for Barclays declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg.
Rodrigues said U.S. retail banking is behind Europe in areas such as contactless payments and in the prevalence of checks, and that he plans to use technology to attract new customers, the FT reported.
“We're going to launch checking, we're in the process of doing the build and we're doing some testing,” Rodrigues told the FT. “We expect to have that in the market next year.”
Read more: Goldman Is Said to Cut Marcus Lending Goal on Credit Caution
Barclays will offer savings rates of close to 2 percent, using a similar approach to Goldman's new brand, the newspaper reported. The U.K. bank will offer loans on the open market and appear on aggregator sites later this month, the FT said.
“We want to ride the curve” of tech adoption, Rodrigues was quoted as saying.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tiago Ramos Alfaro in London at talfaro1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Simon Lee at slee936@bloomberg.net, Paul Armstrong, Steve Geimann
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