Barclays Bank, operating under its trading name Barclaycard, is planning its first credit card securitization of the year, according to a presale report published by Standard & Poor’s.
Gracechurch Card Programme Funding PLC’s series 2014-1, which has yet to be sized, will be backed by Visa, American Express, and MasterCard receivables. Gracechurch is a UK credit card master trust that Barclays established in 1999. While it may be Barclaycard’s first transaction of 2014, the company has issued 15 series in the master trust since its foundation.
Barclaycard currently has eight series of outstanding notes under the Gracechurch trust.
S&P assigned preliminary AAA’ ratings to the British pound, sterling-denominated, floating-rate class A notes. The class A notes will make up 85% of the transaction, and are expected to price at one-month sterling Libor plus a margin. The final legal maturity date for the notes is July 15, 2021.
Barclaycard’s last issuance under the Gracechurch Card Programme Funding trust was in November 2013. The Series 2013-3 transaction offered £1.647 billion of credit card receivables, including a tranche of class A, floating-rate notes rated Aaa’ by Moody’s Investors Service. The unrated sterling-denominated class D notes—making up 15% of the notes—will provide credit enhancement through subordination to the senior notes.
Barclaycard, a global payment business operating as a part of Barclay’s Retail and Business Banking, was founded in Northampton in 1966. Barclaycard was the UK’s first credit card, and currently offers both Visa and Mastercard versions. Barclaycard currently serves approximately 36 million customers worldwide, acting as the leading credit card issuer in the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and the Nordics.
