If there’s one area that fintech companies are giving banks tough competition in the U.S. market, it’s the lending space. With easy application processes, quick decisioning and seamless movement of funds between lender and borrower, alternative lenders are becoming the go-to options for many consumers accounting for 32% of total loan originations last year. So, while some banks might be feeling the competition, others — including non-U.S. banks–– are using this market as a way to expand their presence in the country.

One such example is Barclays U.S., which early this week launched a new consumer lending product. While Barclays is one of the largest banks in Europe, its presence via Barclays U.S. is small in the North American market.

In the U.S. specifically, the bank has about 13 million customers using its credit card, its core product in this market, Ben Harvey, head of consumer lending at the bank told Bank Innovation.

“Look at this new lending product as a part of our broader growth strategy for the U.S. market,” Harvey said. “This will help us reach a wider part of our target audience.”

The personal loan product is a fixed-rate loan ranging between $5,000 and $35,000 to be paid over three, four or five years. Customers will also be able to consolidate all their credit card debt and assign Barclays to disburse payments to these cards.

“It is a multipurpose solution targeted at upper prime and super-prime customers,” he said. “And the entire experience is digital, including all the servicing as well.”

Customers have the option of calling the service centers if they wish to speak to a person, he said.

Harvey and his team first launched the product on an invite-only basis last year, and then it was opened to Barclays cardholders about five months ago, before opening it to the public this week.

“We’ve conducted a lot of post-application surveys where we got feedback on how users rate us on ease of application process and how hard or easy it was to get the loan,” he said. “Users gave us a score of 4.7 out of 5 and an NPS (Net Promoter Score) of 80. Those scores gave us the confidence to take the product live to the wider market.”

The goal of the product was for it to be fully digital and to incorporate all the classic elements around ease, utility, transparency, and speed that many digital lenders have perfected, but not too many banks.

“We’ve been doing a lot of tests around pricing, underwriting, and the application experience,” Harvey said. “Building up to this broader full digital launch, we have a proposition that focuses on four pillars. The first is offering the best value (highly competitive APRs, no fee, no late, no early). Then comes ease and effortless experiences; for this we’ve done a lot of work to make the process from start to finish to be within about 15 minutes. And the last two are simplicity and transparency.”