LU00973 - Payment Portal · UK public procurement notice

There are a number of complexities and key features of the services that mean they are both a) specialised (meaning they are only available from one supplier when considering the key characteristics we require), and b) highly integrated into our existing systems (resulting in disproportionate technical difficulties in implementation of services from another supplier (if they exist) due to incompatibility with our systems).

The services consist of three main parts which are all heavily integrated with our corporate systems:

•a student payment portal

•an online store for selling miscellaneous goods and services

•a platform for integration with other online merchants

The main service is the student payment portal, for which we have a large number of requirements reflecting the complexity of the University’s activities. These increase the specialism significantly in comparison to a simple payment acceptance portal (which would be available from a number of sources). The specific requirements that create such specialisation are:

•A seamless experience for payers via a single “make a payment” button on our website that all students can use regardless of payment method or where in the world the payment is coming from.

•Payers to receive payment options applicable to the location they are paying from, with those paying from locations outside the UK being able to access locally important payment methods, and the ability to pay in their own local currency in as many countries as practically, and legally, possible.

•Payments to be routed via different payment acquirer channels (i.e. University or supplier acquired) depending on the type of payment.

•Support for payers in their local language, covering time zone appropriate hours, and understanding local requirements.

•Students making deposit payments to be able to do so from within our student admissions system

•Integration with our admissions, student record and accounting systems

•Transactional information and breakdowns to support automated reconciliation and allocation of payments.

•Payer information to support the University’s AML checks and processes

•A single interface that can be used to link with third party payment providers in a way that allows the University to link to these, whilst protecting the University’s PCI DSS compliance by preventing its own infrastructure from coming into scope of PCI DSS.

The above requirements have been created to resolve the significant confusion around how to pay the University when more fragmented solutions were in place. These resulted in poor payer experience and transparency as well as high fees for those paying the University. The importance of using an integrated service can be readily demonstrated by improvements in compliance with paying via the University’s approved methods of payment.

We are not aware of any other supplier who can meet all of the above requirements and in the event that such a supplier did exist, the work to transfer between providers would be disproportionate technical difficulties.