British banking system ends up with the US

MasterCard has said “that will do nicely” to itself and is going to spend up to $1.14 billion on buying a majority stake of  a crucial part of the UK’s payments infrastructure.

Up for grabs is VocaLink runs Link, the network that provides interoperability between British ATMs, as well as BACS, the clearing house for payments between bank accounts, and Faster Payments, the inter-bank transfer system for Internet and telephone-based payments.