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BarclayCard Analysis - Marketing
Barclaycard US is a regionalization of its parent company Barclays under the name US Consumer Bank. It organizes its offerings and marketing primarily by the intended use of the product and promotes it through an extensive omnichannel marketing campaign in tandem with Barclays.

Note: Barclaycard US rebranded as "Barclays" in April 2018. Consequently, while we will continue to refer to the company as Barclaycard for the sake of differentiating it from its parent company, our sources may refer simply to Barclays; this should not be taken as an error.

ORGANIZATION BY PRODUCT / GEOGRAPHY

• In addition to its UK business segment, Barclays' (Barclaycard's parent company) segments its Cards & Payments business into the following business units:
• US Consumer Bank (aka Barclays US or Barclaycard US)
• Barclaycard Payment Solutions
• Barclays Partner Finance
• Barclaycard Commercial Payments
• Barclaycard Germany
• Barclay's "US Consumer Bank offers co-branded and branded credit cards in the US" and links to the Barclays Bank US Twitter feed, so we understand this segment to include Barclaycard US despite the segment name.
• The Barclaycard US page segments its cards by purpose:
• Travel
• Retail
• Entertainment
• Everyday
• Cash back
• Business expenses
• Barclays (the parent company) also segments "the financial market on demographics and psychographics variables like age, income & occupation, etc.," according to Marketing91. "It uses differentiated targeting strategy to cater to the needs of the individual and corporate customers/investors respectively."

OMNICHANNEL MARKETING

• Barclays makes heavy use of omnichannel marketing, even employing Raheel Ahmed as the Head of Omnichannel and Customer Experience to oversee a staff of over 20,000 and 2 billion customer interactions a year.
• In addition, Barclaycard UK heavily promotes omnichannel marketing to their clients.
• Barclaycard was listed on the NewsCred top 50 content marketing brands list for 2018. The award notes Barclaycard's deft use of its News and Insights hub to promote its brand.
• Barclays also uses a traditional mix of TV, print, online, and sponsorship marketing.
• Barclaycard's view is, "The market is moving faster than ever and to stay relevant, you have to find a way to move that bit faster too."

BarclayCard Analysis - Priorities
Barclaycard US, like its parent company, has been focused on expanding its market share for at least the last three years via strategic partnerships with fintech and other companies, at least some of which may be intended to neutralize or at least mitigate potential competitors.

Note: Barclaycard US rebranded as "Barclays" in April 2018. Consequently, while we will continue to refer to the company as Barclaycard for the sake of differentiating it from its parent company, our sources may refer simply to Barclays; this should not be taken as an error.

MARKET SHARE AND EXPANSION

• In 2016, Barclaycard announced that it would use money freed up from its exit from Africa to expand its market share in the US and Germany.
• Barclays' 2018 annual report likewise puts a great deal of emphasis on growing its market share, and considers that to be one of its principal measures of success.
• It further states the company's intent to "leverage our extensive experience and expertise developed through our leadership position in the UK to grow our market share in the US."
• Barclaycard's credit card chief, Amer Sajed, noted at the time that there were many opportunities to expand in these markets, it was simply a matter of applying the capital.
• The US expansion (including Barclaycard) accelerated in 2018, primarily due to "higher consumer spending as tax cuts boosted disposable income."

ACQUISITIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS

• Barclaycard has only made two acquisitions; consequently, acquisitions do not appear to be a business priority.
•  Goldfish.com Bank on February 8, 2008
•  The Logic Group on September 8, 2014
• However, Barclaycard has engaged in several strategic partnerships which may give more insight into their strategy:
•  April 2019 — Barclaycard partnered with UnionPay to open up 110,000 UK merchants to transactions from Chinese tourists.
•  May 2019 — AGCO Parts, "a US-based manufacturer and distributor of agricultural equipment and solutions," and Barclaycard partnered to provide a credit card specifically for UK-based farmers.
• In addition, Barclay has partnered with PayPal and other fintech companies to develop new technology in the financial sector, such as blockchain solutions.

COMPETITION

• Known competitors to Barclaycard include:
•  Discover Financial Services 
•  American Express 
•  MBNA 
•  HSBC Holdings PLC  
•  Lloyds Banking Group PLC  
•  The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC 
• Barclays considers "potential new market entrants, such as Fintechs and established large technology companies, [which] threaten to take market share" as among the principal risks to its operating model.
• We hypothesize that Barclays and Barclaycard are trying to mitigate some of this competition by partnering with fintechs to further develop its own technological offerings, particularly for its international segment (which includes the US).

BarclayCard Analysis - Data Usage
Barclaycard US, as a subsidiary of a UK-based company active in the EU, falls under the GDPR and consequently does not appear to purchase third-party data. However, it does make extensive use of first-party data, which it may be feeding back to its parent company for use in Barclays' Research Data Science Platform.

Note: Barclaycard US rebranded as "Barclays" in April 2018. Consequently, while we will continue to refer to the company as Barclaycard for the sake of differentiating it from its parent company, our sources may refer simply to Barclays; this should not be taken as an error.

FIRST-PARTY DATA

• As a London, UK-based company which does business in the European Union, Barclays is bound by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went into effect in May 2018 and provides extensive protections over personal data.
• The GDPR requires that organizations using customer data either have a legitimate interest or other "good reason" to process their customers' data or else get the individual's explicit consent.
• Furthermore, "the French Data Protection agency recently ruled that user consent cannot be automatically passed to third-party data processors such as DSPs as part of a contract."
• Barclay's is currently building a Research Data Science Platform to serve their clients.
• While the source of the data being used is not stated, given the restrictions of the GDPR and Barclay's own observation that "banks are emerging as key custodians of customers’ and clients’ data," it is very likely that the data used by Barclays and its subsidiaries are predominantly or entirely first-party in nature.

PURCHASING 3RD-PARTY DATA

• There are no references to Barclays or Barclaycard purchasing third-party data in either Barclay's annual report or in other media.
• The GDPR applies " to any data controller or data processor of the personal data of data subjects within the EU, regardless of industry or where the company is based."
• Consequently, US-based Barclaycard would likely fall under the GDPR due to its relationship with its parent company (see above).
• It is therefore likely that Barclaycard does not purchase third-party data; however, see below.

DATA USE

• Barclaycard's privacy policy states that, in addition to using their customer data to directly benefit or market to the customer, they also use the data for their "business purposes, such as data analysis, audits, risk control, fraud detection, monitoring and prevention, developing new products, enhancing, improving or modifying our products and services, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and operating and expanding our business activities."
• Barclaycard also collects "other information ... that does not reveal your specific identity or does not directly relate to an individual," including browser and app data, demographic information, and aggregated information. 

• Per the annual report of Barclaycard parent company, "The Research Data Science Platform we are building will become an increasingly important differentiator for us, with state-of-the-art data infrastructure operated by leading data scientists and leveraging alternative data sets in innovative ways. Partnerships with research aggregators and new multimedia capabilities are helping clients interact with us in the channels of their choice, and report enhanced categorization is bringing our best content to a broader audience" (page 39). 
• We, therefore, hypothesize that Barclaycard may be providing data for its parent company's Research Data Science Platform in addition to using it for their own internal business needs. However, we are unable to directly substantiate this hypothesis from the available public data.