GDS seeks councils to participate in pilot scheme
An example of how the GOV.UK Pay service might look when used by to pay for services provided by a local government body Credit: GDS
The GOV.UK Pay service is to be made available to local authorities, with the Government Digital Service looking for councils interested in taking part in a pilot project.
The system, which allows citizens to make online card payments – or receive refunds – for public services, was introduced in central government in November. GDS is now “ready to start a limited pilot with local-government service teams”. The aim of the pilot is to better understand how the needs of local authorities differ from those of Whitehall departments.
In return, local authorities will benefit from being able to use a system that adheres to the government’s Digital Service Standard, and is fully compliant with Payment Card Industry regulations, GDS said.
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Any individual with a public-sector email address can establish a test GOV.UK Pay account. Teams interested in using the service need to go through a “test integration” period of a few days, after which they can be easily switched over to the live service, GDS said.
To date, the Pay system has processed a total of 473,000 payments for central government departments, worth a cumulative £22.3m. Data from the last couple of months shows that it typically handles more than 2,000 transactions each day, with a monetary value that is often in the region of £100,000.
