Set to open in February, Barclays employees will staff the branch during traditional opening hours with more than 18m people shopping at Asda stores every week.
Outside of opening hours, the new branches will offer the full product range and allow customers to carry out regular transactions such as paying in cash and cheques, paying bills, withdrawing and transferring money.
Steve Cooper, head of Barclays Retail and Business Bank said: “We’ve spoken to our customers who use our everyday and business banking services in our branches and they’ve told us their time is precious so would benefit from being able to multi-task, park easily and visit branches with longer opening hours.”
Karen Hubbard, executive director for Property and Multichannel at Asda said: “This is the next step in the evolution of how we continue to make our stores relevant to our customers’ everyday needs, giving them access to banking services to use at their convenience – when they want, and how they want it.”
The first branch will be opened in Asda Birchwood in Cheshire in February 2014. Store trading hours will be from 8am to 10pm, six days a week and 10.30 am to 4.30 pm on Sundays.
A further three branches will open in Asda stores in Pudsey in West Yorkshire, North Watford in Hertfordshire and Broadstairs in East Kent, with the aim to extend the pilot to open eight in total by early 2014.
A Barclays spokesperson said it will open another four branches in yet-to-be-confirmed locations by early 2014 and that the bank already had a corporate relationship with Asda as it provided its ATM machines.
“People are much busier nowadays and when we first launched our branch network the bank didn’t have a website or apps. We targeted places with the lowest footfall and plan to move all the staff from the branch we are set to close into the supermarket.
“In the future, we could look at other places like transport hubs but any decisions will be made based on what our customers want from us,” she said.
