Credit Card Processing Services

The Vendor is required to provide payment processors, merchant service providers, and payment gateway providers to furnish Credit Card Processing Services, including merchant acquiring, payment gateway services, POS solutions, online and recurring payments, chargeback management, reporting, and customer support.
- Provide a secure, reliable, and scalable payment processing solution across all agency payment channels, including in-person, online, mobile, and IVR environments.
- The solution must support a compliant customer-paid service fee program, ensuring no direct cost to the Authority.
- Provide a clearly defined process or checklist that the agency should follow in order to implement all services described in this contract.
- Shall understand that all application development code specifically written for the agency to collect or return information to a customer regarding their business transactions provided under the terms and conditions of this contract shall become the property of the agency and shall be provided to the agency agency prior to implementation of services.
- Shall notify the agency Senior VP of Administration and Finance/CFO prior to beginning work.
- System must be capable of processing transactions directly with Visa, Mastercard, and Discover through their respective settlement networks, and must process American Express transactions directly with American Express.
- Ensure that each merchant ID established includes appropriate merchant descriptors and contact information (Authority name, customer service phone number, and website/email as applicable) to be printed on customer credit card or bank statements, in compliance with card network requirements.
- This structure must accommodate location, transaction type, and reporting needs across all divisions accepting payments.
- The Authority currently maintains two merchant IDs.
- Establish a flexible merchant identification framework that supports multiple merchant IDs or comparable identifiers for the Authority, as determined in consultation with the Authority.
- The payment processing system shall provide:
•    Authorization response times consistent with industry standards (generally under 3 seconds for card not-present transactions and under 10 seconds for EMV/contactless transactions).
•    System availability of 99.9% uptime, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
•    Scheduled maintenance communicated in advance to the Authority, with minimal disruption to service. Failure to meet these performance or availability requirements may be deemed a material breach of contract.
- Must support customers making multiple transactions per day across card types, including recurring and installment payments.
- The payment gateway must support the ability to apply a service fee to customer transactions, including:
•    A percentage-based fee applied to credit card and debit card transactions. 
•    The gateway must clearly distinguish between card types and apply the appropriate fee structure accordingly. 
•    All service fees must comply with applicable brand rules, state and federal regulations, and must be disclosed to customers prior to authorization. 
•    The Authority does not currently accept eCheck payments. 
•    The selected Contractor shall provide the capability to support eCheck transactions, including integration, testing, and deployment, as part of the contracted services.