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TO: Mayor Richard Irvin
FROM: Lisa Zepeda, Revenue & Collections Manager
DATE: September 12, 2024
SUBJECT:
A Resolution Authorizing the Director of Purchasing to Sign a 3-year Service Agreement with CentralSquare Payments for Credit and Debit Card Payment Processing via Paya Connect.
PURPOSE:
CentralSquare Technologies, LLC (Naviline) has been the City's ERP system for over 20 years. The City desires to accept credit and debit cards for Naviline payments without interruption of service and in a manner consistent with best practices. CentralSquare now offers a fully integrated payment solution through Paya Connect which will provide for seamless credit card transactions. This solution is the sole source of a full integration with Naviline and will ensure PCI compliance, integrity of data and easier transaction reconciliation. Additional features and benefits are outlined in the attached CentralSquare Fact Sheet.
BACKGROUND:
Credit and debit card payments have been managed by CORE/Automated Merchant Systems (AMS), a third-party credit card processor since 2006 when the City first began accepting credit cards for goods and services. In 2019, CentralSquare sun-setted Naviline's Transaction Manager which required a new payment acceptance process to be provided by AMS. The resulting changes have proven to be less reliable and a "loose" integration compared to the previous integration.
Since 2019 City staff have had to mitigate a multitude of reconciliation issues that arise when CORE credit card terminals do not settle, when servers go down, or when transactions simply fail to appear as they should in Naviline. Despite efforts by all parties involved to fix these issues, problems have persisted without resolution. Due to these issues, customers attempting to make a credit card payment have experienced error messages, incomplete or missing payments, missing receipts, and duplicate payments which require a refund from the City. The issues and time spent to r...
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