Financial and insurance services

Tender description

Translink intends to award a contract to Elavon financial services using the negotiated procedure without a prior call for competition. This contract is for merchant aquiring services covering the processing and settlement of monies from major payment card scheme (Visa and Mastercard) issuers, for credit and debit card transactions for Translink. It is Translink's intention to directly award a contract for merchant acquiring services for a period of 7 years, at an estimated processing fee value of 525 000 GBP and overall contract value of 2 965 000 GBP. For clarity, while the overall contract value is estimated to be 2 965 000 GBP only 18 % of this is influenced by the acquirer, estimated to be 525 000 GBP. 82 % of the value is set by the card schemes/regulation. The services are crucially important for the following reasons: Continuation of the processing and settlement of monies from major payment card schemes (Visa and Mastercard) issuers for credit and debit card transactions for Translink. Processing of sales revenue from card transactions through multiple channels. Previous investment by all parties of hardware and software certifications, Card Scheme (Visa and Mastercard) and acquirer certifications, PCIDSS security program mandates and protocol compliance. Previous Elavon partnering of EMV payment capability (including all necessary infrastructure) within Translink for ticket vending machines, pay on foot machines and P50 machines. New Translink Future Ticketing System (TFTS) Project has been engineered for integration with Elavon. TFTS EMV acceptance including transit account based ticketing (ABT) model has been certified by Elavon. Elavon has made significant capital investment to provide both cEMV transit ticketing models. All EMV acceptance solutions including transit ABT model has been engineered for integration and certified with/by Elavon. To change Acquirer would have significant financial implications and pose considerable risk to Translink’s TFTS and ABT project delivery as it would necessitate the changing of processes to align and integrate with another acquirer system/provider.