The Department for Work and Pensions: Secure Card Payment Services Procurement

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for administering welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy in the UK, serving around 20 million claimants. The new SCPS Contract is required to ensure continuing capability for the DWP to receive customer payments in a PCI DSS compliant manner and provide all Outbound Telephone calls for the DWP.

The current DWP provision allows business groups to receive customer payments in a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant manner, including an Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) capability to facilitate payments. The DWP service and SCPS contract currently supports approximately 9,000 agents. The current SCPS contract also includes the routing of outbound calls via the PCI DSS compliant service provider.

The DWP takes approximately 750,000 card payments per annum, totalling approximately £130M per annum. This is collected by two areas of the DWP and Northern Ireland's Department for Communities: Child Maintenance Group (CMG); and Debt Recovery.

The DWP is undertaking this procurement process to secure a new SCPS Contract that can meet the current and future needs of the service to ensure value for money and service continuity. This contract will replace the current SCPS contract that enables Debt and Child Maintenance business groups to take customer payments using a Dual Tone Masking Frequency (DTMF) facility.

Under the new SCPS Contract, the DWP has identified the following requirements:

1. Secure Card Payment Services (SCPS): The ability to take payments via inbound and outbound calls in secure fashion for 11,000 agents (SIP Licences);

2. Outbound Call Services - Due to the current architecture, all Outbound calls will traverse the SCPS. Regardless of whether a payment is taken or not all Outbound calls will use the Solution provided;

3. Self-Serve IVR Service - This will be used for Child Maintenance Group (CMG) and is to be outside of DWP. This is used to recover payments from non-payees via payroll. It sits outside of DWP Infrastructure within the supplier's environment;

4. Nailed up PSTN (Optional) - The DWP may require additional outbound call capacity to enable the DWP to deploy a Nailed Up PSTN Solution to deliver voice connectivity to 3rd party outsourcer for up to 6 months after contract start;

5. Additional SIP Licences (Optional) - The DWP may require an additional 2000 agents (with associated SIP Licences) to enable DWP to deploy a Nailed Up PSTN Solution following commencement of the provision of the services.

6. Additional OB channels are required as a tactical Solution to support significant increase in volume of long duration outbound calls being generated by the Genesys platform.

Additional information: Following the publication of PINs: 2023/S 000-004912 dated 17th February 2023 (as modified by PIN 2023/S000-005854 dated 28th February), 2023/S 000-032248 dated 1st November 2023 and 2023/S 000-037265 dated 19th December 2023, the DWP is now seeking to procure the provision of Secure Card Payment Services (SCPS).

The new SCPS Contract is required to ensure continuing capability for the DWP to receive customer payments in a PCI DSS compliant manner and provide all Outbound Telephone calls for the DWP.

The DWP anticipates entering into a Contract for an initial 3-year period (with an estimated value of circa £5.8 million (Exc VAT) with the option, exercised wholly at the discretion of the DWP, to extend the Contract for a period or periods not exceeding a total of 36 months in aggregate (with an estimated value of circa £6.7 million (Exc VAT).

The total estimated contract value including the maximum potential extension period of 36 months and the optional requirements is circa £12.5m.

The DWP anticipates that the effective date of the Contract will be on or around 1 September 2024 following which there will be an estimated 6-month implementation period before the commencement of the delivery of the services under the Contract.

The Contract will be procured using the Restricted Process through FaTS. The form of contract will be the Cabinet Office Mid-Tier Services Contract, amended as necessary to reflect the DWP's requirements.

The dates stated above remain approximate and are subject to achieving the necessary governance approvals.