Merchant Acquiring Services

Merchant Acquiring is an essential contract from a financial perspective as it is necessary to enable residents and customers to pay the council by debit and credit card, over £100m a year is collected by the council using this contract.

This service is a key part of the council's support systems, and essential for the council to be able to collect payments by card as people expect in 2026.

The contract helps enable the goals set out in the Customer Access Strategy to strive to make the online customer journey accessible, user-friendly and straightforward, as customers expect to be able to pay for services online using their cards.

Direct award justification

This is a complex contract to re-procure, involving both a complex, technical procurement, and multiple council departments with differing specifications. If awarded to a different supplier then there is significant work to transition several of the council's financial systems to use the new supplier which would not be possible for technical and operational reasons before the existing contract expires. The Council cannot risk the disruption to this service as this would impact income collection via e-commerce, online or telephone payments from residents and customers.

Therefore, Officers intend to use this time in an effective way to plan a new procurement exercise and procure compliantly a suitably experienced supplier to deliver and support the transition to a possible new supplier of merchant acquiring services.

The Contract is above the applicable threshold for services under the Procurement Act 2023. Officers propose to rely on paragraph 13 of Schedule 5 to the Procurement Act 2023, concerning extreme and unavoidable urgency, as the legal basis for the direct award.

Officers consider that the direct award is strictly necessary to maintain an essential income-collection service and that a competitive procurement procedure cannot be completed within the time available before the current arrangements expire.

The direct award is limited to a period of up to 18 months. Officers intend to use that period to undertake a compliant procurement exercise and to plan and implement any necessary transition to a future provider.

Please see following report of the decision. https://democracy.brent.gov.uk/documents/s159372/Officer Key Decision Report.pdf

Description of risks to contract performance

The contracting authority reserves the right to modify the contract in reliance on Schedule 8 paragraph 8 of the Procurement Act 2023 where the contracting authority requires a modification for additional goods, services or works has arisen in addition to those already provided for in the contract; and using a different supplier would result in the supply of goods, services or works that are different from, or incompatible with, those already provided for in the contract; and the contracting authority considers that this would result in disproportionate technical difficulties in operation or maintenance or other significant inconvenience and the substantial duplication of costs for the authority.