Case Study: Municipality Integrates Departments & Channels Seamlessly

Integrate multiple departments and transaction input points seamlessly into one secure
payment solution.

The Client

Municipality with more than 14 departments, including a Court and Utility
Third largest city in the state
Provide services to enhance citizens lives and the quality of the community

The Challenge

With a handful of City departments utilizing electronic payment services, our client had the vision to expand options for purchasing City-provided goods and services via multiple payment types and channels to all departments. Electronic payments brought many benefits: customers found it easier and more convenient to pay for services, outstanding balances, and citations. Accepting electronic payments also created efficiencies for the City. Each department had unique payment acceptance needs requiring a variety of products, such as hosted payment pages, virtual terminal, and recurring billing.

The solution had to:

Help reduce PCI DSS scope
Easily integrate with SAP and iNovah
Include support for an enterprise hierarchy, including role-based permissions

Business Snapshot

Client

Municipal Government

Challenges

Sought to expand electronic payment processing to all departments
Wanted enterprise structure and user management
Wanted to reduce the cost and complexity of PCI compliance

Solutions

Payment processing services to accept all major forms of payment, in any environment, from multiple locations.

TC Link^® API
TC Vault^® Virtual Terminal
TC Trustee^® Host
TC Payment Portal^®
Custom Fields
Encrypted Card Devices

Results

Helped reduce PCI DSS scope resulting in cost savings for compliance efforts
Revenue growth

The Solution

Although the City had a complex set of requirements, TC solutions are built for ease of integration leveraging the TC Link^® API, long-standing system integration partners, and a comprehensive set of payment solutions. Here are some of the primary components of the City’s payment solution.

Encrypted Face to Face Payments
The City utilizes the TC Vault^® Virtual Terminal for face-to-face and telephone payments. For example, the Court uses the virtual terminal to accept payments at the service desk using encrypted card swipe devices, reducing PCI DSS scope at the point of sale.

Secure Online Payments
Several departments wanted the ability to accept payments online. They accomplish this using hosted payment pages and a payment portal. TC Trustee^® Host allowed the City to customize a hosted payment page with their branding so citizens experienced a consistent look and feel. Because the payment information is entered on a TrustCommerce hosted page, not the City’s web site, it keeps sensitive data out of the City’s environment. This solution also supports recurring billing using tokenization.

The Court utilizes TC Payment Portal^® for citation payments. The Court’s branded payment portal allows citizens to self-manage their account, view outstanding balances and make payments 24 hrs a day via credit card, signature debit card, and ACH. It reduces costs associated with live customer service/Bill Pay. Customers can also schedule recurring/installment payments.

System Integration Partners
TrustCommerce has long-standing relationships with iNovah, SAP and other leading software systems. Our APIs provide ease of integration with any business, finance, cashier, customer, or proprietary management system. The City leveraged several of these integrations within their solution. For example, most departments use SAP Cash Desk to process transactions. Cash Desk calls TC Link^® API to complete payment card processing.

PCI DSS Compliance
By leveraging tokenization, Point to Point Encryption with encrypting card readers, and hosted payment pages, the City is able to reduce the risk, exposure, and liability associated with electronic payment acceptance. This results in cost and time savings.

Enterprise Support
The ability to manage all the different departments within the enterprise efficiently and effectively was a real concern for the City. With TC, this was easier than expected. The City has great control and flexibility to manage its users and their permissions at all times within the TC Vault. From here, administrator(s) can create, edit and delete users at their convenience. The City can also manage multiple Merchant IDs and departments under one Main Controller for cumulative reporting and simplified reconciliation.

Reporting
TC Vault serves as a central location for all reporting. Users can customize and generate reports, research inquiries, and more. TrustCommerce offers advanced and simple reporting which enable the City to reconcile and obtain summary or detail reports pertaining to individual payment transactions on both a real-time and historical basis. Users can run reports in aggregate or reconcile to each specific merchant account by card type and then match to their deposit. TC Reporting includes custom field data allowing the City to match key information in settlements.

Although the City had a complex set of requirements, TrustCommerce solutions are built for ease of integration leveraging the TC Link^® API, long-standing system integration partners, and a comprehensive set of payment solutions.

The Results

TrustCommerce’s dedicated Implementation and Product Managers worked alongside the City’s development team to provide guidance, identify issues, and lead them to a successful integration.

Departments were able to accept credit card payments and continue using their current processes through the use of the TC Link APIs that enables communication between SAP or iNovah and the host service to complete the credit card payment process.