After nine years and more than £6bn in fees taken by over 1,000 services, GDS is now seeking to better support public bodies to rapidly begin processing payments from citizens
The GOV.UK Pay platform is looking to better support public bodies to get up and running on the service with a new £60m deal with a payment services provider.
The tool, which first launched in 2016, is now used by 442 public services to take payments related to 1,228 individual services. Since its creation, a total of £6.4bn has been paid via the platform.
The service works with two payment service providers (PSPs): Worldpay, which has a contract with the centralised Government Banking service, and is used to support central government and NHS services; and Stripe, which supports local government and police payments and is retained on a contract by the Government Digital Service, which developed and operates GOV.UK Pay.
This latter agreement is used to process 17% of all payments taken via the tool but is used across 70% of all public services that are connected, according to a newly published contract notice. The document, released this week by GDS, adds that the current deal with Stripe – which first came into effect in 2022 with an estimated value of about £11m – “is the only option available which enables teams to start taking payments within one working day”.
“This proved instrumental during the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting local authorities to take donations for support and food banks as well as teams who needed to respond rapidly and stop taking cheques, face-to-face payments or reduce their reliance on call centre staff handling telephone payments,” according to detailed specification documents.
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The newly issued notice outlines that GDS is seeking to put in place a new agreement for a payment service provider, beginning in July this year for an initial three-year term. This can be extended by two further 12-month periods and the deal is expected to be worth a little over £59m, inclusive of VAT.
The Whitehall digital unit is seeking bids from firms that can “provide payment acceptance and merchant acquiring for 750-plus public sector services” and can offer “a payment service available 24/7, 365 days for public sector bodies”.
The chosen supplier will also be expected to “provide an efficient, effective and economic service which is reliable and meets expected service performance standards”, including compliance with the latest version of PCI DSS payment card protocols.
GDS also expects the winning bidder to “provide a seamless transfer from the current provider to the new provider, with full continuity of services (with no drop outs)”.
Companies wishing to take part in the procurement have until 19 March to complete an initial qualifying questionnaire phase. Those that successfully navigate this stage will be invited to tender and will then have until 2 May to put forward their formal proposal.
The contract notice adds that, after the agreement has been signed, GDS expects a “12-month onboarding period [with a] view to commence service provision in 2026”.
