MasterCard mulls £1 billion takeover of VocaLink - SkyNews

Unsubstantiated reports suggest that MasterCard has approached the banking owners of VocaLink about a £1 billion takeover of the UK payments processor.

  16 8 comments

MasterCard mulls £1 billion takeover of VocaLink - SkyNews

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

News of MasterCard's interest comes just a week after the UK's Payments Systems Regulator said that banks should sell their stakes in VocaLink to help increase innovation and competition in the nation's critical payments infrastructure.

According to Sky News, MasterCard has hired Citibank to advise it on the approach.

Citing 'people close to the company' Sky News says Mastercard is keen to acquire at least a partial stake in VocaLink to diversify its payments business.

In the UK, VocaLink processes over 90% of salaries, more than 70% of household bills and almost all state benefits. Nearly every business and person in the UK uses its technology and last year the company processed over 11 billion transactions with a value of £6 trillion.

The PSR believes that the common ownership of VocaLink by a small number of banks is having a "negative impact on innovation and competition in the industry".

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Comments: (8)

A Finextra member 

Going to be interesting to see how a MasterCard buy out would foster innovation and competition in the industry given the relative duopoly in cards they currently have with Visa

A Finextra member 

I'm concerned that MasterCard don't have the innovative streak and they feel the need to buy it. I guess both Visa and MCI did the same to Monetise. They will flood it with their own people, make it corporate and then stifle any creativity. The good thing is most of the folks there are X v or m employees anyway.

Andy Hunter

Andy Hunter CEO at Perficiam Ltd

The PSR is making a fundamental mistake in assuming that sale of VocaLink will improve competition and innovation. Its role as a shared infrastructure host is to provide the shared interoperability layer cheaply and effectively. Competition and innovation should occur at the individual bank level but doesn't because there is no marketing cadre with the knowledge and ability to make that happen. A sale to MasterCard will make their position worse and the PSR should avoid it at all costs.

Jasmine Merwana

Jasmine Merwana Product Manager at D+H

This is intesting news considering Vocalink has signed up to deliver core elements for US TCH's RTP. This also shows card players feeling need to participate in real time payments boom worldwide.

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

No one sees a connection with ex MasterCard UK CEO being ex ex VL CEO?:)

A Finextra member 

I think Marrion works for RBS now for about a year.

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

I know. That's why the ex MasterCard...

A Finextra member 

I don't get the claimed "innovation" angle, how "un-innovative" does your business need to be to think that buying VocaLink will improve things!

As a means to try and get a foothold in the US Faster Payments initiative, it's a smarter move...

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