UK government seeks PSP to add Open Banking payments to Gov.UK Pay platform

The UK government is seeking a payment service provider (PSP) to be able to process credit and debit card payments and Open Banking payments on the Gov.UK Pay platform.

Gov.UK Pay is a digital payments platform developed and run by Government Digital Service (GDS) to enable the public to make payments for public sector services online and via telephone.

It currently supports central government, local authority, police forces and NHS teams to take payments for their services digitally.

Since September 2016, the platform has processed more than 94 million transactions with a total value of £6 billion.

GDS has issued a tender, in which it states it is “seeking a payment service provider to underpin the GOV.UK Pay platform, specifically for processing credit and debit card payments and pay by bank (Open Banking) payments made by end users to services operated by local government, police, the armed forces and some other public sector organisations”.

The contract, which is valued at £49.2 million, will be for an initial 36-month period from early July 2025 to July 2028, with two 12-month extension options.

The tender states that there will be a 12-month onboarding period for the PSP, with a view to commence service provision in 2026.

According to the procurement description, the Pay platform has been “used many times by more than 1,000 different public sector services”.

Services using GOV.UK Pay include HM Passport Office’s ‘apply for a passport’.

In 2021, HMRC deployed Ecospend’s ‘Pay by Bank’ technology to facilitate tax payments, marking the first time that an Open Banking payment method had been embedded within a government department’s systems.

Further reading: Ecospend reports ‘substantial’ rise in tax payments to HMRC using Pay by Bank