1. Has your bank or card processing supplier made you aware of the details of the Visa and Mastercard price increases planned for this year? Y/N
Yes
2. Have you been able to quantify the cost of these increases? Y/N
Yes
3. Have you been given any help from your provider to quantify the cost increases? Y/N
Yes
4. Have you been told of any ways to mitigate these increased costs? Y/N
Yes
5. Is your organisation compliant with the card payment security standard PCI DSS 3.2.1? Y/N
Yes
6. Have you been able to benchmark the charges that you pay against the charges paid by similar public bodies for:
a) banking? Y/N
No
b) processing incoming card payments? Y/N
No
c) achieving and maintaining PCI DSS compliance e.g. call masking and automated payment phone lines Y/N
No
d) income management systems Y/N
No
7. Which providers currently supply these services:
a) banking
Barclays
b) processing incoming card payments
Civica
c) achieving and maintaining PCI DSS compliance
Civica
d) income management systems
Finest
8. What was your spend in the last financial year for:
a) banking?
b) processing incoming card payments?
c) achieving and maintaining PCI DSS compliance?
d) income management systems?
Devon County Council do not hold the figures broken down in the format requested, but we can provide you with the figures below:
20/21 £93,278 Barclays
20/21 £209,178 Civica
20/21 £584,893 Finest
9. In respect of your last financial year, please can you provide an estimate of the:
a) value of receipts received via card payments
£4m
b) number of receipts received via card payments
30,000
c) total charges for processing the above card payments
Devon County Council believe compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. This is because we do not hold the data broken down in the format requested, and it would require a check of 88,000 transaction.
In the interests of providing advice and assistance, we are able to tell you that we current pay £29,000 per year for the entire system from our payment provider.
– this is a tricky one to comment on as we have 88k transactions as part of our annual core charges from our payment provider.
10. Have your current providers advised you of the financial and other opportunities created by Open Banking transactions? Y/N
Yes
11. Are you using Open Banking data services to drive down costs? Y/N
Yes
12. When are your current contracts due to expire for:
a) card processing
2024
b) banking
2024
c) payment compliance services e.g. call masking & automated phone payment lines
2024
d) income management systems
2024
13. Please can you attach a copy of a recent statement / invoice for:
a) processing your card payments.
b) banking services
c) payment compliance services
d) income management systems
Our view is that it would not be in the public interest to share the recent invoices. This is because sharing this information could jeopardise our ability to achieve best value for money. Therefore, we are withholding this information in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, S43(2): Information is exempt information if its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it).