The Government Digital Service (GDS) has developed a Welsh language version of the GOV.UK Pay platform.
It has said that Health Inspectorate Wales (HIW) has become the first organisation in Wales able to take online payments through the system, and that it opens the potential to organisations under the Welsh Government to do so.
The move marks an extension into the Welsh language for the platform designed to facilitate online payments for government services.
According to a GDS blogpost, it has come after HIW indicated that it wanted to move away from cash payments without having a digital service to support this and needed the capacity for people to use it in Welsh.
Writing in the blog, engagement lead Inga Sileryte says: “We built on the pre-existing feature to provide payment pages in Welsh, so now the entire payment links journey is available in Welsh. We did the same for custom branding.
“Like our previous work, we internationalised these pages so we can easily add more languages in the future.”
Interoperability measure
The change involved adding cy, the ISO 639-1 language code for Welsh, which helps to provide for interoperability and consistency in using the platform, and translating the dynamic text.
This followed the internalisation of templates within GOV.UK using the i18n Node. Js package.
Stuart Fitzgerald, director of strategy and engagement for HIW, said: “The introduction of online payments to HIW is bringing huge benefits to both independent healthcare providers, who can pay registrations quickly and easily, but also to the organisation, through streamlining and automating the payment process.
“GOV.UK Pay has provided a free and secure solution to both organisational branding and, for the first time, for the Welsh language.”
Image from GOV.UK, Open Government Licence v3.0
