Vocalink is partnering with the National Preparedness Commission to bring its unique experience running the UK’s always-on payments infrastructure into the country’s wider resilience and preparedness agenda. The partnership comes as AI-enabled threats, cyber risk and geopolitical uncertainty are putting UK resilience in sharper focus, alongside climate-related disruption, including heatwaves, drought and flooding. It reflects the need for an all-hazards resilience mindset — recognising that disruption can cut across sectors and quickly affect essential services. Unlike some services that can restrict usage when under strain, payments need to keep working: salaries and benefits still need to arrive, bills need to be paid, businesses need to trade and cash needs to remain accessible. Keith Douglas, Chief Executive Officer of Vocalink, said: “Billions of pounds seamlessly move through the UK’s retail payments infrastructure every day, yet payments are too often seen as background plumbing. They are not — they are essential to how households, businesses and government keep functioning through disruption. “Through this partnership, we will bring Vocalink’s specialist operational experience into cross-sector preparedness discussions. Other essential services can draw on what we are continuously learning as we innovate and operate always-on payment systems — helping to make the UK stronger against fast-moving threats that can spread rapidly across sectors and borders.” Lord Toby Harris, Chair of the National Preparedness Commission, said: “In an era of greater global volatility and rising climate risk, the UK must be better prepared but we cannot build national resilience sector by sector. “Payments are central to how the country functions, and this partnership will help ensure resilience and preparedness lessons are shared across the essential services that underpin the UK’s economy and society.”As part of the partnership, Vocalink will contribute its experience of operating the UK’s core payment systems since 1968, supporting the Commission’s work on how the UK’s critical sectors can modernise and prepare for future shocks. Keith Douglas has also joined the Commission as a Commissioner, bringing a senior payments perspective to its wider programme of research, events and industry engagement on national preparedness. The partnership builds on a new report from BAE Systems Digital Intelligence, produced in collaboration with Vocalink and Mastercard, which warns that in an always-on economy, payments resilience can no longer be measured by how quickly systems recover, but by whether they keep working through disruption. Drawing on lessons from across critical infrastructure sectors, the report highlights why resilience must be built into the way essential services are governed, operated, modernised and connected across supply chains — not treated as a technology issue alone. NoYesPayments23 Sep, 2026