Merchant Services

The Vendor is required to provide merchant services to engage a full-service vendor experienced in the development, installation, and operations of a credit, and debit card processing service for the city.
- Requirement:
• Competitively based discount for the processing of all four major credit cards: visa, MasterCard, discover, and American express, and provide additional discounts for utility payment processing.
• Allow the city to authenticate and validate the card using online payments, mobile payments, and in-person payments using chip cards, magnetic stripe cards, contactless payments, near-field communications and mobile payments through digital wallets such as apple pay, google pay, and Samsung pay.
• Card readers should use payment card industry data security standards (PCI-DSS) encrypted Ethernet network connection to communicate with the authorizing gateway and the cashier point of sale system and support EMV chip card technology.
• Allow the city to accept payments using interactive voice response technology (IVR).
• Support recurring payments including the ability to automatically charge customers on a regular basis.
• Deposit payments electronically into specified city bank accounts by merchant id ensuring that
• Batch processing and file transmission capabilities with real-time settlement
• Support for multiple merchant ids and department-specific reporting and reconciliation
• 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.
• Be compatible with existing city software and able to interface using API.
• Rest API for wallet (saved card) and single transactions.
• Credit card and bank account tokenization support.
• Offer "system admin" level web application for viewing logs and API errors.
• Comprehensive documentation and support for their API, including sample code, SDKS (software development kits), and technical support resources to assist with integration and troubleshooting.
• Monthly statements by merchant id that clearly summarize all revenue related activity including all chargeback information by date, data and card type.
• All processing fees must be separated from revenue deposits.
• Deposit activity must match the actual deposit activity in the city’s accounts.
• Seven (7) days per week and 24 hours per day technical support with written service level agreements (SLA’s).
• Business continuity/disaster recovery in case of unplanned outages in the vendor’s merchant processing system.
• 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. Provide evidence of compliance with these standards and conduct regular security audits and vulnerability assessments to ensure ongoing compliance.
• Current service organization control (SOC) report that verifies the effectiveness and security of payment processing systems.
• The report must be issued by a reputable third-party auditor and cover all relevant controls related to the security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of customer payment data.
• The report must be made available upon request, without signature of a non-disclosure agreement.
• Processing credit payment records transmitted for processing and settlement from major credit/debit card processing networks, and with at least five (5) public sector customers.
• Financial stability documentation including audited financial statements and adequate insurance coverage.