Oxfordshire County Council has awarded a contract to Pay360 by Capita for payments through a range of channels as part of the Council’s drive towards offering services that are ‘digital by default’.
Thanks to Pay360, citizens will be able to pay by credit and debit card over the phone, face-to-face and online for a wide range of council services including parking and registrars. Payments will update the Council’s income management system in real-time, allowing staff to easily view recent payments and where necessary, to process any refunds.
Ian Dyson, Assistant Chief Finance Officer (Assurance) at Oxfordshire County Council, said:
“One of the key strengths of Pay360 was their capability around integration, ensuring that our front-end systems can easily and seamlessly access the card payment process, to support a quick and smooth customer experience.”
For ease of use, citizens also have the option to securely store their card details in encrypted form, so that future payments can be made more rapidly and where required. Also, a schedule of recurring payments can be set up and automatically processed at agreed intervals.
Ian explained that security of customer cardholder data is a key priority for the Council and Pay360 makes it simple and easy to ensure this:
“Pay360’s CallSecure solution is used by our call centre staff so that when customers phone in to pay, at card entry stage the customer is passed to an automated system. The citizen then types in their card details using the telephone keypad. This means that the call centre staff neither sees nor hears the actual card details.”
Following the successful award of the tender to Pay360, the project went live in February 2018. Ian said that bids were considered from a number of suppliers and the Pay360 bid achieved the highest score in terms of both quality and price:
“I was particularly impressed by Pay360’s track record in ensuring that their portfolio is consistently first-to-market with card security measures and that they can point to a service that has been certified in line with PCI DSS since 2007. Pay360 also has an impressive product roadmap with continual improvement and extension to their product set bringing us the added advantage of both software provision and card acceptance and authorisation through a single supplier.”