India’s Tata Consultancy Services reportedly in the race to run UK’s Faster Payments service
Mumbai-headquartered Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is reportedly in the running to take over the administration of the UK’s Faster Payments network from Mastercard-owned Vocalink.
TCS looks to operate UK’s Faster Payments service
As per a report from Sky News, the consulting and IT solutions business of Indian conglomerate Tata Group is vying with Vocalink for the opportunity, with sources suggesting TCS is now the leading candidate.
Vocalink first came into being when two partnered companies, Voca and ATM network Link, merged in 2007. This combination brought together Voca’s bulk processing capabilities with Link’s payment switching service, which ultimately resulted in the arrival of the Faster Payments infrastructure in 2008.
Faster Payments facilitates money transfers from one UK-based bank account to another at near-instant speed, and since launching the service, Vocalink claims its infrastructure has processed over 3 billion bank-to-bank payments transactions to date. The company was ultimately acquired by Mastercard in 2016 for $920 million.
Vocalink has spent the best part of 16 years fine-tuning the service – alongside the BACS payment system and Link ATM network it operates in tandem.
While Vocalink provides the backend infrastructure that enables Faster Payments, the UK retail payments authority Pay.UK has been responsible for imposing the supporting rules, standards and policies for the service since 2017.
Sky News reports that a final decision won’t be confirmed until the UK government’s Vision for Payments strategy is published and new consumer protections around Faster Payments are instated as a result.
Speaking to FinTech Futures, a Pay.UK spokesperson says it is conducting “a comprehensive and competitive procurement process for the New Payments Architecture (NPA)” and that prospective vendors, including all relevant data, competition and regulatory requirements, have been “carefully examined”.
“We are now going through the necessary regulatory non-objection and assurance process. We will not comment further while the process is ongoing.”
Mastercard tells FinTech Futures that it has “not received any communication from Pay.UK on the matter” but understands that “the bid process is still in the regulatory non-object phase”.
Likewise, TCS says it is “unable to provide any comments on the matter in question”.
This initial report has prompted discussion regarding the feasibility of transferring the service from one infrastructure provider to another, and how such a move could be successfully achieved without any potential downtime.
Faster Payments sits at the core of the UK’s payment capabilities, and is heavily relied upon to complete everything from everyday household transactions to payroll and state benefit payments. Any potential migration would no doubt be a huge undertaking.
