What is "vocalink"

VocaLink is a payment systems company headquartered in the United Kingdom, created in 2007 from the merger between Voca and LINK. It designs, builds and operates the UK payments infrastructure, which underpins the provision of the Bacs payment system, the Direct Debit system, the UK ATM LINK switching platform covering 65,000 ATM’s and the UK Faster Payments systems.

VocaLink processes over 90% of UK salaries, more than 70% of household bills and 98% of state benefits. In 2013 the company processed over 10.5 billion UK payments with a value of over £5 trillion. In July of 2016 Mastercard purchased a 92% stake in the company, with the remainder to be held by UK banks for a period of three years.