Barclays to launch 24-hour video banking

Barclays is set to introduce a video banking service to give customers face-to-face and online access to staff 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The high street bank hopes Barclays Video Banking will give it a better digital presence for customers making more complicated account enquiries outside of normal trading hours, and will introduce the service from next week.

Barclays Premier account customers will get first access to the iOS and Android app, and will be able to do their annual account reviews from 8 December, followed by mortgage, business and wealth customers early next year.

After that the bank will focus on rolling out the app to all retail customers, meaning everyone will be able to have one-to-ones with banking staff via their smartphones and tablets.

Steve Cooper, CEO of personal banking at Barclays, said: "While many of our customers are increasingly using digital channels to complete routine transactions, for the important moments, you just can't beat face-to-face conversations yet traditional branch opening hours don't always give customers that choice.

"In addition to the availability of our staff in our branches, over the phone or online, we are combining our dedicated staff with digital technology to bring this facility to customers wherever they are and at a time they choose putting them in control of when and where they do their banking."

The news comes after Barclays closed 54 branches in 2014, compared to the nine it opened, while in October, Lloyds Banking Group announced plans to close 200 sites.