Mastercard closes deal to acquire VocaLink

Payments card giant Mastercard has completed its acquisition of bank account-based technology specialist VocaLink, a £700m (US$900m) deal first announced last July. The group said that VocaLink’s key bank account-based technology will allow it to expand beyond card-based payments to drive the major types of electronic payment transactions. Expansion would include further innovation in retail transactions and payment flows such as person-to-person (P2P), business-to-business (B2B) and government disbursements. “This is a transformational deal,” said Michael Miebach, chief product officer, Mastercard.

VocaLink powers real-time bank account-based payments – fast automated clearing house (ACH) – in several of the world’s largest financial markets: the UK, Singapore and Thailand, with the US scheduled to go live later this year. Its technology is also at the centre of the UK’s automated teller machine (ATM) and traditional ACH systems, as well as a new mobile offering that enables consumers to pay for retail purchases directly from their bank accounts.