Specifications include, but are not limited to: A. Consolidation of merchant services: The City of Saco is looking for a merchant service provider to go “behind” our front-end terminal software so that the City can review reports on credit card purchases for the organization as a whole rather than pulling reports from multiple different merchant services portals. This will also greatly simplify reporting and access so that relevant users only need access to a single portal rather than multiple portals for reporting. Successful applicants should be knowledgeable about our various front-end software solutions and be able to swap in for the existing merchant services provider through the use of industry standard tools. The merchant service provider should have tools for creating accounts, permissions control, and excellent reporting options. B. Reduction of Costs: The City of Saco is looking to reduce costs, specifically overhead management fees, credit card processing fees and the amount we pay for each eCheck transaction. The City is hoping consolidation of the merchant services accounts will reduce overhead and fixed fees so we can reduce our annual fees. The City of Saco collects $1.9 million annually in online credit card transactions and pays an estimated $48,500 or 2.53% in fees. However, fee percentages vary from provider to provider with the lowest being 1.82% and the highest being 21.63%. The City collects $3 million annually in eCheck transactions and pays an estimated $18,000 in fees or 0.60%. The City collects $1.7 million annually in-person credit card transactions with a 2.5% fee that is paid by the customer. C. Seamless integration with MUNIS/Tyler ERP: A successful applicant will be able to seamlessly integrate with the City’s payment entry process into MUNIS/Tyler ERP. This should be the case for both online and in-person electronic payments via credit or debit card. The City would like to eliminate double-entry of payments into a separate portal, which is the current practice for in-person payments. Custom exports for journaling online payments across our various payment platforms will be a major plus.
