County and Citywide Payments

The Challenge

Technology and payments within city, county, and state governments are often a complex mix of solutions that are pieced together over time. In any given government, there may be dozens of technology stacks supporting various agencies and departments, like the offices of the treasurer, clerk, planning, courts, and many more.

Some agencies and departments may have multiple ways for people to pay — online, by phone, and in person. Others require manual, cumbersome processes for both the residents who pay and the government employees who reconcile payments and provide customer service.

Governments want a modern, unified way for people to pay their taxes, fines, and fees. They want to collect revenue faster, and they want to see both the full picture of a city’s revenue and transactions for each agency or department.

The Solution

Cities and counties across the U.S. partner with CityBase for integrated payments across every department. Because CityBase provides online and in-person payment channels, all transaction activity across all departments is visible in one place.

Seamless Customer Experience

Customers have a drastically better payment experience, whether they pay their bills online, via smartphone, at a cashier, or by self-service payment kiosk. No matter what bill a person is paying, or to which department, they encounter an intuitive, modern, and consistent payment experience — all branded as their local government, and backed by CityBase best-in-class security.

It’s easy to add more debt types to the CityBase platform, and new payment channels for departments that are already integrated. Our PCI Level-1 compliant secure platform is run on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and scales elastically to meet demand.

Single Point of Reconciliation

We meet the diversity of government departments by integrating directly to every disparate source system via API, enabling real-time revenue management and reporting for every channel and every department.

A single back office solution facilitates efficient account reconciliation review, integrated third-party payment files, and creates a single point of reconciliation for all payment channels and debt types. Direct integration to your source systems means updates in real-time with every payment and reversal.

Perfect Chain of Custody

We deposit directly to bank accounts, label fundings with revenue codes, and post directly to the general ledger. At no point does CityBase directly handle government funds, maintaining a perfect chain of custody while also providing industry-leading funding speeds for card transactions.

Working with CityBase, we were able to think about the core infrastructure issues, which often go unaddressed in relationship to online payments: both the PCI compliance and the money movement. We knew we needed to have something that supported the diversity of our departments. Now, we have seamless integration across different departments, so one business can see itself in its entirety. It creates a cohesion around that notion of, 'We are one city.'

Tajel Shah Chief Assistant Treasurer
City and County of San Francisco
Watch the Client Testimonial →