Pay.UK and Vocalink, a Mastercard company, are pleased to announce the extensions of our payments infrastructure contracts.
The contract renewal sees Pay.UK as the Payment System Operator awarding multi-year extensions to three contracts to Vocalink for the provision of central infrastructure services, ensuring continuity into the early 2030s for the core UK interbank payment systems: Faster Payments System (FPS), Bacs Payment System, and Image Clearing System (ICS).
These extensions ensure the ongoing availability of the UK’s core payment systems, with the agreements strengthened to reflect continuous improvements being delivered across the services to enhance resilience and support innovation.
Pay.UK’s payment systems – FPS, Bacs and ICS – underpin the UK economy and ensure banks, businesses and consumers can transact without disruption. Vocalink plays a vital role in this, securely processing more than £37 billion worth of payments every day for Pay.UK. In 2024 alone, nearly 12 billion transactions worth over £10 trillion were processed through FPS, Bacs, and ICS.
The contracts have been carefully structured to provide stability and allow the necessary time and flexibility to enable the design, development, and implementation of the future retail payments infrastructure. This work is being driven by the Bank of England in collaboration with the wider payments industry through the Retail Payments Infrastructure Board (RPIB), working with the other UK authorities, to deliver the National Payments Vision.
David Pitt, CEO of Pay.UK, said: “These extensions with Vocalink secure the UK’s core payment services while strengthening resilience and service obligations. Our payment systems are highly reliable, they provide the stability our economy, banks and businesses depend on as the backbone of everyday financial activity in the UK.
We remain committed to safeguarding the integrity of UK payments and supporting innovation for the future.”
Keith Douglas, CEO of Vocalink, said: “Our strategic partnership with Pay.UK is built on a shared commitment to providing resilience and innovation for payment systems in the UK.
These contract extensions will ensure continuity for critical national services, providing reliable, secure and timely account-to-account payments to businesses and millions of people every day.”
