Mastercard Weighs Majority Stake Sale in Vocalink as UK Pressure Over US Ownership Mounts
Mastercard Weighs Majority Stake Sale in Vocalink as UK Pressure Over US Ownership Mounts #
Mastercard is in early-stage discussions about selling a majority stake in Vocalink, the UK payments subsidiary it acquired from a consortium of British banks nearly a decade ago, according to multiple reports citing people briefed on the matter.
Vocalink designs and operates the technology behind the UK’s real-time payments, settlement and direct debit systems, as well as ATM networks serving more than 47,000 machines across the country. By some estimates, the platform processes the overwhelming majority of UK salaries, household bills and state benefit payments, making its ownership a long-standing commercial and political concern. A sale of a majority stake would return control of the infrastructure to domestic hands.
According to people familiar with the situation, discussions remain at a very early stage within Mastercard and no firm offers have been received. A Mastercard spokesperson declined to comment when approached by PYMNTS.
Mastercard originally acquired a 92.4% stake in Vocalink from a group of 18 British lenders in 2016, paying an initial £700 million with a further performance-linked earn-out of up to £169 million. A transaction covering a 51% stake today could be valued at around £400 million, one of the sources indicated.
One entity being considered as a potential buyer is DeliveryCo, a bank- and payments industry-backed organisation formed to oversee procurement and funding for the UK’s next-generation retail payments infrastructure. DeliveryCo is still finalising its own funding and governance arrangements, making it unlikely that any transaction would complete before next year.
Vocalink reported a net loss of £12.4 million in 2024, compared with a profit of £1.9 million in 2023. The Bank of England fined the firm £11.9 million last year for failing to comply with a regulatory direction concerning systems and controls, the first time the central bank had fined a financial market infrastructure company. Political concerns about US-owned companies controlling strategically sensitive European payments infrastructure have also been cited as a factor in Mastercard’s review, according to the people familiar with the matter.
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