Acquired by Mastercard in 2017, the UK’s Vocalink manages the UK’s Bacs payment system, ATM LINK switching platform, and the Faster Payments System, FPS. To make this more tangible, consider these statistics: Vocalink processes over 90% of UK salaries, more than 70% of household bills, 98% of state benefits, and powers 60,000 ATMs. 

Vocalink’s influence goes beyond the UK, with technology that powers fast payments infrastructure in countries such as the US, Thailand, Sweden, the Philippines, Peru, and Saudi Arabia - just to name a few.

Vocalink’s origin story, which began in 1998, spurred payments modernization efforts worldwide. For this episode, we sat down with Gregor Dobbie, former CEO of Vocalink, to discuss what we can learn from Vocalink’s journey and what the future holds for core payment systems.

Have you ever wished for a “payments sherpa”? Someone who would share their experiences, opinions, and advice about this industry - the uncut, “real real” of what can happen and what to remember as you move along your payments journey. In this episode, we sit down with one of our favorite payments industry sherpas - Steve Klebe. 

No stranger to our podcasts, this time Steve talks about payments partnerships. This is a topic Steve is passionate about - and for good reasons. Partnerships - the successful ones - make this industry go around. The right partnerships can make the industry better, bring novel and differentiated offerings to the market, and make the payment transaction easier, more secure, and more valuable to consumers and businesses. 

Steve has invested about half his career creating successful strategic partnerships for Verifone, CyberSource, Google, and more (frequently going out on a limb to do it), and he survives to tell his tale. We hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed recording it.