The Department for Work and Pensions: Secure Card Payment Services Procurement

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for administering welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy in the UK, serving around 20 million claimants. The DWP operates the largest contact centre in the UK government, providing support to customers from around 135 locations and offering specialist services such as debt recovery, card payments, and assistance for customers with complex needs. The current DWP Secure Card Payment Services (SCPS) allows business groups to receive customer payments in a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant manner, including an Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) capability to facilitate payments. The DWP service and SCPS contract currently supports approximately 9,000 agents. The current SCPS service and contract also includes the routing of outbound calls via the PCI DSS compliant service provider. There is additional potential for approximately 2,000 more agents in the future that is not currently accounted for in the current SCPS contract. The DWP is planning to procure a new SCPS that can meet the current and future needs of the service while providing value for money and service continuity. The new SCPS contract is required to ensure continuing capability for DWP to receive customer payments in a PCI DSS compliant manner and route all related outbound telephony calls via a PCI DSS compliant service provider. DWP is currently looking to conduct early market engagement with a view to concluding the competitive procurement activity by June 2023. The DWP is holding an online event via techUK on 2nd March 2023 at 2pm with a view to preparing the procurement and informing suppliers of DWP's procurement plans and requirements for SCPS and answer questions regarding the planned procurement. Following the event, the DWP will issue a Request for Information (RFI) to gain further insight from the supply market that may help to shape the approach to market. Register for the event via the techUK website. https://www.techuk.org/what-we-deliver/events/dwp-market-engagement-event-secure-card-payment-services-procurement.html