Research Participant Payment Management Solutions

The Vendor is required to provide services for managing and distributing payments to research participants.
- The University is particularly interested in solutions that support privacy-preserving, compliant, and participant-friendly payment processes across a wide range of research contexts, including regulated clinical trials and minimal-risk behavioral studies.
- Payment Processing
•    Supported participant payment methods (e.g., ACH/direct deposit, virtual or physical prepaid cards, digital wallets, gift cards, cash‑equivalent options)
•    Tiered, milestone‑based, or task‑based payment structures aligned with IRB‑approved protocols
•    Automated or approval‑based payment issuance workflows
•    Support for flexible compensation models (e.g., bonuses, partial or prorated payments)
•    Visibility into platform fees versus participant compensation
•    Tools to estimate or model study‑level payment costs
•    Payment methods and fee structures
- Compliance
•    Support for tax reporting and compliance (e.g., 1099 tracking and issuance)
•    Ability to support diverse participant populations, including unbanked individuals, foreign nationals, minors, and other special populations
•    Alignment with institutional policies, IRB requirements, and applicable federal regulations
•    Clear guidance on taxable versus non‑taxable incentive types
•    Policies governing secondary use of participant data
- Security and Data Protection
•    Data privacy and security controls consistent with industry standards (e.g., PCI‑DSS, SOC 2, GDPR, as applicable)
•    Role‑based access controls and segregation of duties
•    Fraud prevention and participant verification measures
•    Use of coded or non‑identifiable participant identifiers where feasible
•    Defined data retention, deletion, and anonymization practices
•    Payment options that do not require participant email addresses, where available
•    Use of coded identifiers instead of direct PII
•    Retention timelines and deletion/anonymization features for participant data
•    Policies on secondary use of participant data (e.g., analytics, marketing, third-party sharing)
•    Availability of payment methods that do not require participant email addresses (e.g., claim/download codes)
- Experience and References
•    Demonstrated experience supporting academic, clinical, and federally regulated research
•    Case studies showing participant satisfaction, administrative efficiency, and payment timeliness
•    Case studies and references from peer institutions
•    Metrics such as redemption rates and time-to-payment
•    References from peer institutions, especially academic medical centers, tier 1 research
•    Use cases in academic or research environments
•    Experience supporting academic survey research
•    Performance metrics and scalability
- Tracking, Reporting and Integration
•    Real-time tracking of payment status (issued, delivered, redeemed, expired)
•    Dashboards with participant-level and study-level views
•    Automated alerts for failed or unredeemed payments
•    Exportable reports (CSV, Excel, PDF) for study accounting, sponsor reporting, IRB/internal audits
•    Audit trails linking Study ID, coded Participant ID (non-identifiable), payment amount, date, and method.
•    Duplicate/erroneous payment detection and resolution
•    Integration with institutional systems (e.g., Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS), Electronic Health Record (EHR), and financial systems)
•    Support for digital signing tools (e.g., DocuSign)
•    Tracking location of study participants/tracking tax status of individual payees
- User Experience and Support
•    Intuitive administrative interfaces for research teams
•    Mobile‑friendly and accessible participant experiences
•    Multi‑language support, where available
•    Participant and administrator support services (e.g., help desk, documentation)
•    Simple redemption process without requiring complex account creation