Merchant Services

The vendor is required to provide merchant card processing services, including, but not limited to, the following:
1. Payment processing services
•    Provide processing services of credit and debit card transactions, including, but not limited to:
o    Visa
o    MasterCard
o    American express
o    Discover
•    Support for card-present and card-not-present transactions
•    Ability to process payments via:
o    Point-of-sale (POS)
o    Web-based and online portals
o    Mobile through digital wallets such as apple pay, google pay, and Samsung pay
•    Ability to accept payments using an interactive voice response technology (IVR)
•    Support for recurring and scheduled payments, where applicable.
2. Security and compliance
•    Comply with all relevant industry standards, including but not limited to the payment card industry data security standards (PCI DSS), to ensure the security of all cardholder data.
o    Provide evidence of compliance with these standards and conduct regular security audits and vulnerability assessments to ensure ongoing compliance.
•    End-to-end encryption and tokenization
•    Fraud detection and prevention tools
•    Secure handling and storage of payment data
•    Assistance with PCI compliance reporting and validation
3. Equipment and technology
•    Any software associated with providing these services must be web-based and not require software, other than a current web browser, to be installed on county devices. 
•    All software must be compatible with county financial systems and third-party software 
•    All software must have secure web-based reporting and transaction management tools 
•    Software must be in compliance with PCI-DSS 
•    Software must support security assertion markup language (SAML) v2 to authenticate individual pierce county employees.
•    The samlv2 solution must support Microsoft azure ad, and Microsoft active directory federated services via web application proxy. 
•    Provide the specifications of all necessary supplies and equipment needed for the departments to accept payments made by credit and debit cards. 
•    Purchase or lease any equipment necessary for the departments to accept payments made by credit and debit cards.
- Settlement and reporting
•    Provide "interchange plus" pricing for merchant services with two (2) day settlement 
•    Provide monthly statements per merchant id that clearly summarize all revenue-related activity including all chargeback information by data and card type. 
•    All processing fees must be separate from revenue deposits. 
•    The statement deposit activity must match the actual deposit activity in the county’s accounts. 
•    Capability to credit the bankcard transactions in gross amount and be billed through analysis at month end for the sales discount and fees.
•    Provide online access and reporting to view and download daily transactions, account reconciliation, and settlement reports by merchant id, by payment card type, and by transaction. 
•    Online access to view, hold, or void transactions before they settle or refund specific transactions.
- Customer support and account management
•    Provide dedicated account management 
•    Provide seven (7) days per week and 24 hours per day technical and customer support with written service level agreements (SLA’s). 
•    Provide business continuity and disaster recovery in case of unplanned outages in the vendor’s merchant processing system.
•    Training for county staff as needed.