The Scottish Government is working on a single system for receiving payments.
Hugh Wallace, a transformation lead, wrote in a blogpost on the Scottish Government website that “payments as a platform” made more sense than trying to redesign every government system that currently accepts payments.
“Building a single platform also means we can establish standards that will work across government,” Wallace wrote, adding: “It will be quicker for us to set up new services, or retire old ones. When new payment technologies emerge, we’ll be able to securely add them to the platform once, for the benefit of everyone."
The Scottish Government set up a team to examine the topic in September 2018 and has since been carrying out research and preparation to build a business case and a proof of concept. It is working with UK software designer and developer Scott Logic.
Wallace said that the team will be using an agile development approach of starting small and developing step-by-step. It also plans to share its progress through blogposts, he added: “When we do learn something, we’ll share it here. We’re going to show the thing as much as possible, with lots of photos, sketches and screenshots.”
The UK-wide Government Digital Service already runs Gov.uk Pay, a platform allowing public sector organisations to accept online card payments. Partner organisations include the Ministry of Justice, Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Kent County Council, as well as by Disclosure Scotland, an executive agency of the Scottish Government.
Image of Scottish Government payments team from Scottish Government website, Open Government Licence v3.0.
