Founded in 1968, Bacs has processed over 150 billion payments in the last five decades. In 2021, over 6.5 billion UK payments were made this way, including 4.6 billion Direct Debits. On 1 May 2018, Bacs Payment Schemes Limited became a wholly owned subsidiary of the new home for UK retail payments, Pay.UK. The responsibility for the operations of Direct Debit, Bacs Direct Credit, the Current Account Switch Service, Cash ISA Transfer Service and the Industry Sort Code Directory were handed over to Pay.UK. The Bacs payment systems are recognised as systemically important infrastructure under the Banking Act 2009. This means that, as the owner and operator of Direct Debit and Bacs Direct Credit, Pay.UK is regulated by the Financial Markets Infrastructure Directorate at the Bank of England.