Banking services

Tender description

Shropshire Council wishes to create a framework agreement with 1 or a number of contractors. The framework agreement shall comprise of 7 separate lots for the provision of merchant accounts, payment gateways, fully managed PCI DSS, compliant card acceptance, direct debit, swipe cards and bar-code payments, call masking and IVR, and automated payment systems. Further details of each lot are provided in Section II.2) The fundamental objective of the Framework is to provide an efficient payment services for a range of public sectors across the UK and the EU to deliver financial savings and enable compliance with legislation. As part of this Process it's intended to award a contract under lots X and X for Shropshire Council from the commencement of the framework. Applicants may bid for 1, more than 1 or all of the 7 Category lots and any of the 63 sub-lots under each of the 7 Category lots, please see tender documentation for full details. The framework will be for a period of 4 years from 8.7.2016. A merchant account service to provide for the processing of card payments, including the provision of card processing terminals. A service which allows the Contractor to accept credit and debit card payments as well as alternative payments. The service facilitates the secure passing of funds from a client's account to the Contractor's account. The requirement for the provision of card processing equipment includes all physical terminals which accept the transaction data and transmit it to the merchant acquirer. A payment gateway service requirement for an e-commerce application service that authorises credit card payments for e-commerce and MOTO transactions. The payment gateway facilitates the transfer of transaction data between a payment portal (such as a website, mobile phone or interactive voice response service) and the acquiring bank. A 1-stop-shop for card payment acceptance, this service will include provision of, merchant account services, dynamic currency conversion, point-to-point-encryption terminals, payment gateway services, payment hosting, call masking and Interactive Voice Response systems (IVR). The provision of services for this Lot is intended to de-scope the Contractor's transactions from PCI DSS regulations to the maximum extent possible, thus ensuring a secure payment processing environment which has only minimal management requirement to obtain and maintain PCI DSS compliance. Direct Debits. The provision of swipe card and bar-code payment acceptance systems. This lot enables Payers to make payments to the Contractor by means of the Post Office Counter network (and other networks) where a physical payment can be made using cash or cheque or other means and the payment is then assigned to an individual account by means of association with a provided bar-code or swipe card. The Lot includes the supply of new and replacement swipe cards. A standalone service to remove card data from the telephone payment channel in order to improve efficiency, security and PCI DSS compliance. The Lot includes hosted voice platforms which can be used by customer service agents to take payments in the course of a telephone conversation without being exposed to the liability of hearing or seeing card-holder data. Also included is a requirement for an automated solution for unmanned payment phone lines. A SAAS providing the ability to make fully automated payments to Tenderers and other parties which can effect payment to multiple parties from a single transaction. The service should be able to allocate any percentage, or fixed amount, or combination of the 2, to any number of parties in a transaction and also to automatically, or on a scheduled basis, allocate varying rates of sales tax into multiple accounts.