UK bank Barclays has begun piloting a contactless mobile cash service that will enable customers to withdraw cash with a tap of their NFC mobile phones or contactless debit card. The service is scheduled to be rolled out to more than 180 bank branches in the new year, and will be enabled on more than 600 in-branch machines.

Customers will be able to pre-select the amount they want to withdraw through the Barclays Mobile Banking app and then tap their phone on the contactless reader to withdraw their cash within 30 seconds, or tap their phone or contactless card on the reader and enter their PIN on the machine to begin the withdrawal process.

A Barclays spokesman says the Contactless Cash service will launch on existing in-branch machines rather than high-street ATMs.

“In the future, we hope to roll-out to high-street ATMs,” the spokesman adds.

“Our customers now expect to be able to use their smartphone to make their everyday purchases,” says Ashok Vaswani, CEO of Barclays UK.

“We want taking out cash to be just as easy. With Contactless Cash, customers can quickly and securely take out money with just a tap of their smartphone.”

Customers will be able to withdraw up to £100 (US$124.93) in cash using the service.

The bank completed its host card emulation (HCE) mobile payments roll-out across the UK in June 2016 after announcing plans to add HCE to its mobile banking app in May.

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