Barclays offers customers anytime mobile video banking service

'UK first' will see bank customers able to speak to an advisor from smartphones, tablets or laptops at any time

Barclays, Britain's biggest retail bank, is set to offer customers the ability to use mobile video technology to have face-to-face consultations with staff at any time of day.

In what Barclays is calling a "UK banking first", premier account customers will be able to use mobiles, tablets or laptops to have direct one-on-one video contact with a member of bank staff.

The service will automatically match customers to a Barclays employee, with the bank stating that, if possible, the customer will be matched with a member of staff they've spoken to before.

"This is a watershed moment for the way people do their banking in the UK - where we will finally be able to interact with customers completely on their terms, rather than ours," said Steven Cooper, CEO of Barclays Personal Banking, who added that the video technology will allow customers to make out-of-hours enquires.

"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," he said.

"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 want to do their banking," Cooper added.

While the Barclays face-to-face video service will initially only be for premier account customers, it will be rolled out to mortgage, business and wealth customers from early 2015, before being made available to all retail customers later in the year.

Barclays insist that the service will be both convenient and secure, allowing customers to use online video conferencing safe from the prying eyes of cyber criminals.

The move doesn't represent the first time Barclays has deployed cutting-edge technology to make its service more efficient for its customers. Earlier this year it revealed what it called "the future of fraud prevention in corporate banking" with the Barclays Biometric Reader, a tool that reads veins to ensure security.

The Hitachi-developed tool, which uses "vein authentication technology" to ensure secure customer authentication for corporate transactions, will be rolled out in early 2015.

The deployment of face-to-face video technology and the biometric reader both come after Barclays hired Michael Harte, former Australia Commonwealth Bank CIO, to be the bank's CTO.