Vocalink

In November 1998 HM Treasury commissioned a review of competition within the UK banking sector, to be chaired by Sir Don Cruickshank. Reporting in March 2000, The Cruickshank Report of competition within the UK banking sector recommended that:[9]

• Clearance scheme ownership and management should be split from infrastructure operation and delivery
• Infrastructure management should be conducted on a commercial basis with fair and open access to third parties
• A need for a low-cost way to transfer money quickly[10]

In response, on 1 December 2003, Bacs Payment Schemes Ltd (BPSL) was split from Bacs Limited. BPSL was established as a not for profit company with members from the banking industry, the purpose of which is to promote the use of automated payment schemes and govern the rules of the Bacs scheme. Bacs Limited owns the infrastructure to run the Bacs scheme. Bacs Limited was permitted to continue to use the Bacs name for one year, becoming Voca Limited on 12 October 2004.[11]

LINK Interchange Network Ltd was formed in 1985 to create interoperability between ATMs across the United Kingdom. It became an international network in the 1990s through connection with the MasterCard and Visa networks. In October 2002 LINK launched the first service that used ATMs as a retail channel, enabling the facility to top-up a mobile phone at an ATM, bringing banking and mobile phones together for the consumer.[12]

Bacs provides two payment products to consumers:

• Bacs Direct Credits, payer-initiated interbank transfers. VocaLink processes 2 billion of these payments every year, including over 90% of all UK salaries and 98% of state benefits.
• Direct Debits, transfers initiated by authorised payees. Three-quarters of UK adults have at least one direct debit commitment; the average person has at least six.[15]

VocaLink provides the underlying BacsTEL-IP infrastructure for Bacs,[16] which processes over 5.6 billion of clearing and settlement of automated payments a year,[17] with a value of £4.2 trillion.

VocaLink provides the switching infrastructure behind LINK, the busiest ATM switching system in the world which switches over 3.5 billion card-initiated transactions from 130 million enabled cards annually.[18]

VocaLink designed, built, and operates the infrastructure for the Faster Payments Service on behalf of the Faster Payments Scheme. Running in parallel with Bacs and CHAPS, launched in 2008 it enables interbank transfers in real-time. Since 2008, over three billion Faster Payments transactions have been securely processed by VocaLink.[19]

VocaLink has developed Zapp, a function that will reside within mobile banking apps to allow users to make real-time payments to retailers when shopping online or in-store. The service will be open to all financial institutions, merchants, acquirers, and consumers when it launches in 2015.[20]

A Zapp payment works through secure digital 'tokens', which means that customers don't reveal any of their financial details to retailers. This also means that merchants do not need to store card details.

Zapp has been developed by VocaLink who operate the UK payments infrastructure. VocaLink processes over 90% of UK salaries, more than 70% of household bills and 98% of state benefits. In 2013 VocaLink processed over 10 billion transactions with a value of over £5 trillion.

Zapp is backed by four UK high street banks, meaning 18m consumer accounts are potentially Zapp-enabled: HSBC, Nationwide, Metro Bank, Santander.