Money Transmission Services for Government Banking

His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is the UK's tax, payments and customs authority and collects the money that pays for the UK's public services and gives financial support to people.

Government Banking (GB) sits within HMRC and is the banking shared service provider to Government and the wider public sector, providing banking services to over 600 organisations (hereafter referred to as "customers").

To deliver the direct-to-bank model and facilitate payments in and out of Government, GB contracts with commercial banks. The current Money Transmission Services (MTS) contracts which facilitate this process are due to expire in March 2025.

The purpose of this updated PIN is to:

a) advise the banking industry that HMRC (on behalf of GB) intends to undertake a tendering exercise to award new contract(s) for the provision of MTS;

b) Provide further information on envisaged MTS requirements and the prospective procurement; and

c) invite potential providers to register (if not already registered) through HMRC's eSourcing system - using the instructions provided below.

For the intentions of this Prior Information Notice (PIN), HMRC Commercial, a directorate within HMRC, is acting on behalf of GB. Therefore, HMRC Commercial does not solely represent the interests of HMRC in publishing this PIN.

GB is seeking long term arrangements for MTS which are resilient, secure and able to move with industry changes. The following, non-exhaustive, list of banking services are in scope:

• Account Provision;
• Electronic Banking;
• Payment Products
• Reporting
• Customer Support
• Incident Management
• Overlay Services

It is envisaged service requirements will be delivered across the following lots:

• Lot 1 - "House Bank A" covers general banking services, including Bacs, CHAPS, Faster Payments, Local Banking, Cheques and Spot FX.
• Lot 2 - "House Bank B" covers general banking services, including Bacs, CHAPS, Faster Payments, Local Banking, Cheques and Spot FX.
• Lot 3 - "Overseas Payments" covers regular and one-off Spot FX not covered by Lots 1 and 2 (i.e., Exotics), ACH network services and FX advisory services.

Any resulting contracts will be enabled for use by GB customers including Government departments, executive agencies, non-departmental bodies, and the wider public sector (including the National Health Service). Further customer information is provided in the "Customer Background" document.

It is intended the Restricted Procedure will be used to source MTS requirements, with the 'Selection Stage' commencing in March 2024 and the 'Award Stage' commencing in June 2024. Subsequently, the envisaged contract award date is January 2025.

Please see the 'Detailed PIN information' document for further information on the scope of requirements and prospective procurement timescales.