ScotPayments

ScotPayments is a payment service designed and built by the Scottish Government. It allows the Scottish public sector to make outbound payments to people or organisations.

Custom built features

ScotPayments has custom built features designed for government, by government. This means it’s quicker and easier to make payments through ScotPayments, rather than relying on legacy technology or an off the shelf product.

Common platform with shared standards

ScotPayments is a common platform with shared standards, it can slot into your organisation’s current technology frameworks. It also means that when we need to update something, our team can do it once to update the payment system for every organisation.

Government priority

ScotPayments is part of the push towards common platforms highlighted in the Digital Strategy, to transform the payments landscape and lead to improved public services. By using ScotPayments, organisations will have more time to focus on operational front line work rather than back end products and services.

Any public sector organisation or team can use ScotPayments if they:

• make outbound payments
• verify bank details

Make outbound payments

Currently, ScotPayments is used to make:

• staff salary payments
• supplier payments
• outbound payments to the people of Scotland

ScotPayments is an in-house Bacs bureau which means it can process payments for partner organisations.

In the future ScotPayments plans to become a commercial bureau, which means it will also be able to process payments for other entities. For example, the NHS and local authorities could use ScotPayments to make their outbound payments. 

Verify bank details

ScotPayments also offers a stand-alone name and bank detail verification service called Confirmation of Payee. Confirmation of Payee allows staff to check bank details before making a payment to reduce fraud and error.

Any public sector organisation or team can use Confirmation of Payee and you do not have to make payments through ScotPayments in order to use the service.

ScotPayments is currently centrally funded, which means there are no costs to your organisation for:

• onboarding to the platform
• making payments
• conducting Confirmation of Payee checks

Work is ongoing to agree how we'll fund the service, but we expect it to be similar to other payment providers if we do begin to charge users.

ScotPayments is offered as a shared service to public bodies across Scotland who make outbound payments. It will:

• drive consistency
• reduce complexity
• remove duplication of effort and cost
• provide more transparency
• make auditing easier
• enhance security
• reduce and prevent fraud

Time and cost savings

ScotPayments allows finance staff to see live data they may not have had access to before. Users can see live payments data rather than wait until it comes through after processing. Having this data in the system saves time and allows you to search payment data quicker and easier.

Confirmation of Payee also allows users to check payment details before making a payment, highlighting errors in real time rather than waiting for transaction failure.

Finance and operational staff can have tailored access to the ScotPayments system while still keeping information secure. This also saves time by reducing duplication and removing the reliance on financial staff to share payment status updates manually with operational staff.

User focused

ScotPayments was built for our users. They have been involved throughout the process; from discovery through to design, development and testing. We aim to build a universal payment service that any public sector organisation or team can use.  

The team work closely with the Digital Directorate’s Design System team and accessibility specialists to help build a service that everyone can use.  

We run regular rounds of user research to hear from our users. This allows us to prioritise features and design/adapt based on feedback before the feature or change goes live.  

When you’re a ScotPayments user, there is also a dedicated support team who engage with our users daily to rectify any issues or answer queries. This means you’ll know who to contact if something goes wrong.  

Digitisation

ScotPayments uses a component based approach which allows us to integrate into partner organisation’s current technology and adapt to any future technology transformations.

This means that ScotPayments is ready for any future demand and can adapt quickly. When new payment technologies or industry standards emerge, we can add them securely to the ScotPayments platform once, for the benefit of everyone.

Security and compliance

We have built ScotPayments from the ground up to align with modern security best-practice, and the latest Government security standards.

Compared with many legacy approaches, the ScotPayments use of cloud infrastructure and modern frameworks enables an improved security posture, and an ability to adapt rapidly to combat the latest cyber threats.

Using always-on, evergreen cloud security tooling allows for a continuous assurance and compliance approach, that utilises the Scottish Government’s Security Operations Centre capability to monitor, detect and respond to any issues.

As an entirely Scottish Government-run service, we can assure that the service has been built to conform to the security needs of Scotland’s public sector.

Using ScotPayments as part of your digital service

If you’d like to find out more about the ScotPayments service, email: ScotPayments@gov.scot.