LONDON, February 18, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- VocaLink, the international payments specialists, today announced that it has partnered with SMA Financial to deliver smart, comprehensive connectivity solutions to banks and their corporate customers in the UK.

The service, which is an extension of VocaLink's established Service Bureau, offers advanced transformation and routing solutions as well as providing viable, low cost, hosted connectivity to a range of channels including SWIFTNet. Designed to remove the in-house operational cost of managing multiple bank relationships, it enables banks to consolidate multiple accounts through a single standardised platform whilst benefiting from economies of scale. Corporate customers will also benefit, by gaining easier access to their chosen payment service provider and banks through this single access point for all of their payments, regardless of the format.

The partnership strengthens VocaLink's core offering in the UK to provide its customers with high volume, reliable payments processing in a cost effective environment. It builds upon VocaLink's established relationship with SMA, having worked on a number of business and technical SWIFT projects over the last three years. The collaboration will enable VocaLink to offer greater flexibility for designing efficient migration and payments consolidation strategies for UK banks, allowing them to reap the benefits of cost reduction and improved control.

Simon Murby, Managing Director at SMA Financial, comments: By partnering with SMA and leveraging its SWIFT outsource and messaging expertise , VocaLink has strengthened its position as a leading player in the payments industry. The partnership will ensure VocaLink's customers can concentrate on running their core business safe in the knowledge that all of their payments needs will be managed by the two industry experts in financial messaging. As VocaLink's Bureau of choice for the UK market, it reinforces SMA's position as the leading provider of outsourced SWIFT connectivity and related services.

Fred Bär, Managing Director for Euro Services at VocaLink commented: This partnership allows us to offer a range of advanced connectivity capabilities and standards, enabling our customers to benefit from a single route for all their connectivity, transformation and routing needs. By outsourcing to payments and connectivity specialists, operational overheads are greatly reduced and banks and corporates are able to streamline their payments, increase straight-through processing (STP) and reduce operational risk. As a result, we are able to fulfil the highest requirements in terms of stability, availability and security at the same time.

About VocaLink

VocaLink is a specialist payments partner to banks, their corporate customers and government departments.

We design and deliver smarter domestic and international automated payments systems, and smarter ATM switching solutions.

In fact, our switching platform connects over 60,000 ATMs, the world's busiest network, while our payments platform processes over 500 million payments per month.

Having pioneered electronic payments for over 40 years it's perhaps no surprise that many major organisations have come to rely on our services.

For example, our Real-time Payments Platform is the central infrastructure for the UK's Faster Payments Service, whilst we've partnered with BGC, Sweden's leading payments provider, who now outsource the majority of Sweden's domestic payments to us.

We are very proud of our service delivery record. Our platforms operate on never-fail technology to ensure total reliability and availability 24 hours a day allowing us to meet our customer needs.

In short, our smarter payments capabilities offer banks, corporates and government departments reach throughout SEPA and beyond.

VocaLink. safer payments, smarter partner.

Please visit http://www.vocalink.com for more information

About SMA Financial

Founded in 1995, SMA Financial has established its leadership as a source of specialist knowledge and expertise in the financial services industry providing SWIFT services, product and support. SMA Financial is the SWIFT Regional Partner for UK, Ireland, Channel Islands and the Nordics. It is the most extensively SWIFT accredited partner with over 300 successful implementations with banks, corporates and other financial institutions including more than 100 active SWIFT Service Bureau users. The company provides SWIFT Service Bureau, AML and SystemCare solutions as well as experienced consultancy services.

For further information please visit http://www.sma.co.uk

SOURCE: VocaLink

CONTACT: Notes to Editors: For further information, please contact:Suzanne Hewitt, Hotwire, +44(0)20-7608-2500 or vocalinkuk@hotwirepr.com;Deborah Souter, VocaLink Limited, +44(0)870-920-8651 ordeborah.souter@VocaLink.com; Jenny Swift, Rivercalm (SMA enquiries)+44(0)207-152-6118 E: swift@rivercalm.com