Barclays extends cheque imaging service to Android and iPad users

Barclays has extended its mobile cheque image service to Android phones and Apple's iPads.

The service, which was rolled out last year allows customers to make cheque payments by taking a photograph of it on their smartphones and forwarding it to the bank electronically.

According to Barclays, nearly £750,000 (€1.05m, $1.17m) had been deposited electronically over the past year, by 30,000 customers who signed up for the service on their iPhones.

"The latest roll-out will see this number rise yet higher as more customers are able to benefit from the speed and ease of this time-saving technology," the bank said in a statement.

For retail customers, the technology allows a cheque of up to £500 (€703, $780) to be cleared in just two days, rather than the six days the normal cheque takes at present.

Corporate customers can also use the service, but they will have to wait for the standard six-day clearing period.

"Our customers have welcomed this convenient new way of depositing one of the oldest forms of payment, which is why extending to Android phones is an important step forward in giving all customers the ability to pay in cheques using their mobile devices," said Ashok Vaswani, Barclays personal and corporate banking chief executive.

Barclays was the first bank in the UK to unveil the mobile cheque imaging service in 2014, although similar projects were already up and running in the US, France and parts of Asia.