Merchant Services

The vendor is required to provide merchant service with extensive experience to supply cardholder present and cardholder not-present credit and debit card processing services and possibly automated clearinghouse (ACH) processing through certain payment channels.
- Customer payment channels and integration requirements
• Integrate with the system customer portal and mobile app and allow system residential and commercial customers the ability to pay their bill by credit or debit card.
• Customers a confirmation number for a verified credit/debit card payment.
• Service provider must be able to provide system with a real-time confirmation number, the respective system account number and the amount paid to system via secure web service API.
• Accept and process ACH transactions through the service provider’s webpage but provide this pricing separate if additional cost for implementation.
• The service provider must integrate with the system IVR system and allow system residential and commercial customers the ability to pay their bill by credit or debit card.
• Service provider must provide customers a confirmation number for a verified credit/debit card payment.
• Service provider must be able to provide system with a real-time confirmation number, the respective system account number and the amount paid to system via secure web service API.
• Provide the ability to accept and process ACH transactions through the IVR but provide this pricing separate if additional cost for implementation.
• The service provider must provide agent-assisted payments which allow for secure payments to be processed while on the phone without hearing or seeing sensitive DTMF tones (card numbers) via masked, PCI-compliant technology or while agent is on hold.
• Once payment has been processed, the customer and agent should be able to disconnect from the service provider and continue their transaction.
• The service provider must demonstrate the ability to support, enable, and rapidly add emerging customer payment channels in addition to traditional credit and debit card payments.
• Solution must support (or provide an implementation roadmap and timeline to support) the following payment channels:
• Digital wallets (e.g., apple pay, google pay, Samsung pay) for web and mobile transactions.
• Pay-by-text / SMS payments, including one-time secure payment links and optional recurring enrollment flows.
• Pay via PayPal or Venmo
• Pay via retail cash pay locations extending to our third-party pay locations
• The solution must include the ability to schedule future dated payments, and ability to cancel future dated payments.
• The solution must also provide the ability to offer recurring payment enrollment.
- Funds settlement, remittance and transaction processing
• The service provider must provide the following required information for each customer payment in the remittance file:
• System customer account number
• Payment amount
• Date and time of payment – initiation and payment date
• Payment trace/reference number
• Payment method (type of credit card or debit card)
• Last 4 digits of customer’s card
• Payment interface (web, IVR, service provider call center, or payment center)
• System uplift program donation
• Payment unique identifier
• Service provider must also demonstrate the capability for real time payment processing.
• Rules for how single and multi-payments will be submitted in the remittance file:
• Single payments consist of a single payment for a single customer account and will be detailed as such in the remittance file.
• Multi-payments consist of a single payment for multiple customer accounts.
• The remittance file will list each payment per customer account individually with a reference grouping the payment to the multi-payment transaction.