Working closely with Pay360, two neighbouring councils in Dorset offer their citizens a range of convenient and highly secure payment options
The two councils awarded a contract for the delivery of a shared service payment solution to Pay360.
Before awarding the contract, the Councils conducted a detailed evaluation of the market and found that Pay360 stood out in certain key areas. Most notably, these included their proven track record around card security measures, their experience in delivering similar shared services and their innovation when bringing new payment channels to market. Neither Council was a current user of Pay360 payment software, with Weymouth and Portland using a competitor solution and West Dorset having an in-house solution.
Pay360 were able to provide a proven fully managed cloud-based solution, which would markedly reduce the requirement for on-site hardware and infrastructure and the associated systems management overheads. Their case was made all the stronger at the pre-sales stage, where Pay360 provided detailed on-site presentations and were able to identify the potential for other benefits over and above those initially outlined by the Council.
As well as providing a solution that outshone other competing proposals, Pay360’s solution was competitively priced, with costs being both transparent and fixed and with on-going savings on card transaction rates
The challenge
The Council had a tight deadline for implementation and had stipulated that the system must be up and running and taking payments by this date. Pay360 worked to produce an implementation plan that would deliver this.
From the outset, Pay360 staff delivered regular on-site consultancy in order to ensure that the systems were configured in line with requirements, backed up by weekly project meetings working to PRINCE2 standards.
The solution
Pay360’s solution includes a number of payment options:
- Face-to-face – using card, cash or cheque
- Online
- By telephone – using an automated service
- In a Contact Centre – extending to any authorised member of staff with browser access
- Income Management - controlling, reconciling and reporting on income collected
- Mobile devices for taking card payments ‘in the field’
The benefits
Christian Evans (Financial Performance Manager) had a key role in the selection of the new system and outlined some of the major drivers behind the project, stating
‘We wanted to replace our existing systems with a shared service that could support a range of convenient payment channels and incorporated the ultimate in card security safeguards. The shared service option made for markedly reduced costs, both as regards procurement and also in the on-going management and maintenance overhead. Moreover, with the service being cloud-based, we have the reassurance that no card details are stored within our own infrastructure, which markedly reduces our own scope around PCI. Pay360’s long-standing track record around payment services delivered in the cloud, was a key factor in the selection process.
The single licence and on-going maintenance charge, together with the reduced hardware and IT support requirement will deliver significant savings when compared with the alternative of each council purchasing a dedicated solution.
We were particularly impressed by the income management solution that will ease the reconciliation of income process and can be easily configured by our own staff where additional reporting is required over and above that that comes as standard.
This will allow us to provide a true joint service, whereby a member of staff in any location can take a payment from a customer of either Council and with staff using the same software at both Councils they will be able to identify and share best practices and ways of working and work together on suggesting any product enhancements.’