Havering Council and Citi, the major U.S. financial institution, have joined forces to offer end users simple and convenient ways to receive allowances and benefits, and at the same time the Council will be able to more than halve their existing processing costs for cash and cheque payments.
Havering Council has appointed Citi to supply Prepaid cards to replace cash and cheque payments. Twenty-nine other councils have also joined the framework arrangement and can achieve the same benefits.
Havering already use the system for direct payments of personal budgets. Potential uses for the Prepaid cards include: payments for social care budgets, such as adult social care and personal/individual budgets, asylum benefits, and housing benefits. The London Borough of Lewisham is also using Citi’s Prepaid solution for payments to young people leaving care.
This aggregated procurement has been let under Lot 2 of the Buying Solutions Government Procurement Card (GPC) framework agreement which means that the 29 councils can participate without the costs of having to manage their own individual procurement whilst also benefitting from the aggregated approach.
Citi is the largest supplier of prepaid cards globally and it has designed its systems to cater specifically to the types of payments that councils make, particularly around social care. Under the system councils control the amount and flow of funds available to end users and benefit from standardised management information and control programmes. End users can access funds in several ways including via ATMs and over the counter.
D.C.