Barclays ditches dot com in favour of proprietary domains

Barclays is to ditch its dot com domains in favour of proprietary URLs ending in .barclays and .barclaycard.

The bank says the switch will create a more secure and streamlined experience for customers engaging online.

Troels Oerting, Barclays Group CIO, says: “The launch of the .barclays and .barclaycard domain names creates a simplified online user experience, making it crystal clear to our customers that they are engaging with a genuine Barclays site. This clarity, along with the advantages of controlling our own online environment, enables us to provide an even more secure service."

The migration to .barclays and .barclaycard domain names has already begun for the non-transactional parts of the estate, with the introduction across all sites being gradually phased over time. During the transition, automatic domain redirects will transfer customers to the appropriate page.

Related Companies

Barclays Bank

Channels

Retail banking Security

Keywords

Mobile & online banking

Comments: (3)

A Finextra member 15 May, 2015, 14:02

Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up

0 likes

Seems a surprising move to me. People are very familiar with .com and trust it. In the short-term I suspect people will be (rightly) wary of these new, unfamiliar domains. It will be interesting to see if lots of big companies follow Barclays' example.

Report abuse

A Finextra member 15 May, 2015, 15:40

0 likes

In total 619 brands applied for a brand regsitry including .Apple .Google .IBM .Nike .BMW .Toyota .Chase .HSBC .Hilton .Marriott etc. BNPParibas, the 11th ranked global banking brand, also launched a new site on its brand registry LivingTheChange.BNPParibas. .COM isn't going away anytime soon but the brand registries allow financial institutions and online retailers to operate at a deeper level of security because no one else can register a .Barclays domain but Barclays. Anyone could register barclaysbanking.com as an example for nefarious activities.

Report abuse

A Finextra member 18 May, 2015, 09:17

0 likes

Exciting times in dot brand land. This is a really interesting development and the first real bet on a dot brand extension. AXA did put up a page in March 2014 on .axa, Marriott has announced that they will use .marriott for their affiliates, however Barclays seem to be the first to go all-in. Rumours have it that .bmw is up next.

Surely the natural reaction from internet users are: "Why a new extension, when everyone is used to .com and co.uk?". Are you aware how much phishing costs banks? For a bank it's increasingly important to secure a safe haven for its users. They can do that with a .barclays. Secondly, branding wise the timing looks very good. They signal that they are different than others and will get a lot more exposure, than if they were brand no. 400 to launch a dot brand. And there will be hundreds more dot brands coming out. There are too many strong players betting on dot brand for it to fail.