allpay Limited appointed City of Edinburgh Council’s prepaid card supplier

allpay Limited, the UK’s leading payment specialist, has been awarded the role as City of Edinburgh Council’s prepaid card supplier, following a competitive tender. The cards enable residents who receive a Direct Payment to purchase services identified within their care plan. The services include care providers, individual personal assistants, respite facilities and day centres.

Since winning the contract in November 2016, allpay Limited has worked with the Council on the migration of more than 950 service user accounts from the Council’s existing provider, including the transfer of over £3million in residual balances.

The benefits of allpay Limited’s solution include enabling the Council to load and recoup surplus balances on the cards in real time and access self-service reports detailing transaction-level spend. In addition, the Council will have visibility on all cardholder accounts, with the ability to suspend or close accounts in real-time.

Upon award of the contract, allpay Limited worked with the City of Edinburgh Council to complete a Programme Overview document, detailing the parameters of its scheme, service limits and Merchant Category Code (MCC) blocking. The payment specialists worked with the Council on a timeline for communication and operational level activity, ensuring cardholders had a ‘dual card period’ where they would receive their new allpay Limited prepaid card ahead of their current card closing.

allpay Limited provided on-site training for the Council, including operational and monitoring training, and set up a Funding Account. As part of the training, allpay Limited also registered service users on its Organisation Portal, with cards despatched to service within five days. Following the launch, allpay Limited offered a week of onsite consultancy for the Council, aiding it in integrating the unique cardholder references within its care software and maximising the reporting suite to aid financial monitoring. The programme was implemented on time, with ‘Ease of Use’, ‘Product Documentation’ and ‘Overall Satisfaction’ rated ‘very good’ by the Council’s users.

Elizabeth Davern, business development manager at the City of Edinburgh Council, said: “There was good communication between ourselves and allpay throughout the process. allpay also alerted us to the need for cardholders to be issued with a 60-day card closure notice from the existing supplier. Our contact with allpay’s product manager, Simon Thomas, has been very helpful in sorting out any issues with cardholders – and allpay delivered the service in time for our go-live.

“From an administration point of view, the allpay system very streamlined, allowing us to load and recoup funds to and from the cards in real-time, whereas previously requests had to be sent to our card provider to carry out these actions.”

Kevin McAdam, prepaid director at allpay Limited, said: “We are pleased to be supplying the City of Edinburgh Council with our prepaid services. The process of migrating a large volume of accounts has been a rewarding one, and we’re encouraged by the positive feedback. We look forward to working with the Council further and alleviating the financial pressures local authorities are facing to support care programs with a straight-forward payment process that requires little input from the Council.”

 

Collecting more than £6.3bn a year from more than 63 million transactions, allpay Limited is the UK’s leading payment services specialist, offering the widest range of payment collection services. The business is part of allpay Limited, established in 1994, and headquartered in Hereford, with offices in London and Cheltenham.

allpay Limited works with central government departments, social housing, education, credit unions and debt collection agencies, to facilitate the collection and receipt of revenues. It works with 75 per cent of the top 400 housing associations and a third of all local authorities in the UK. The company works with each of its clients to save them money through creating modern payment and card systems that are both cost effective, and convenient for the end consumer. In addition to bill collection, allpay Limited also operates prepaid cards and cashless technologies for a range of sectors.

 

Since conception in 2009, allpay Limited has provided prepaid solutions to a wide number of local authorities, housing associations, charities and financial institutions, working with a number of high profile local authorities across the UK. The firm offers products that meet the needs of clients, from emergency payments to schemes that require an extensive range of functionality and payment solutions, utilising its ‘banking lite’ platform with ID capability. Over the last year, it has issued over 40,000 cards, loaded in excess of £30 million, enabled over 400,000 Point of Sale transactions and provided back to local authorities in recouped funds of £264,000. allpay will continue to provide innovative solutions and expand its presence having successfully gained its e-money license, which will enable it to provide a range of services across the globe.

 

Since launching in 2008, allpay Card Services has become one of the fastest growing and most trusted brands in plastic card manufacturing, built on a reputation for delivering a bespoke and high-quality service to clients, no matter how small or large the requirement.

Certified by Mastercard and Visa, allpay Limited produces everything from credit and debit cards for banks and building societies to prepaid, transit and ID cards for a range of industry sectors all over the UK, Europe and the rest of the world.

Being one of only two UK based scheme approved card manufacturers, allpay Limited has complete control of the process in-house – from design through to distribution – allowing the firm to respond rapidly to clients’ needs and deliver card programs faster than any other manufacturer.

For more detailed information visit www.allpay.net