Citywide Merchant Card Processing

Scope: The purpose of this RFP is to award a contract to the Proposer most qualified in delivering comprehensive merchant card processing solutions that provide the highest level of service quality, operational reliability, and delivers the best overall value to the City. The selected provider will be expected to help the City achieve the following objectives:
• Provide secure credit and debit card payment processing for City Departments and the public. • Support modern acceptance for card payments at the point of sale, including EMV chips, contactless/NTC, and mobile wallets (Apple Pay/Google Pay). • Employ innovative, proven merchant processing technologies that improve efficiency, transparency, and cost-effectiveness for the City. • Maintain best-in-class security controls, including delivery of PCI DSS-compliant product solutions, tokenization and point-to-point encryption (P2PE), fraud detection support, and robust disaster recovery, to safeguard payment data and reduce PCI scope. • Ensure transparency and required customer disclosures for any customer-paid service fees, consistent with California SB 478 and card-organization rules. • Meet the City’s funding and reconciliation standards: T+1 settlement, gross-amount deposits without netting fees, and merchant ID level separation of deposits to simplify SAP reconciliation. • Deliver continued access to a secure online reporting portal that provides merchant-level transaction and settlement detail, supports chargeback dispute resolution, and offers flexible ad-hoc reporting capabilities. • Where needed, ensure seamless integration with the City’s Enterprise Resource Planning System (SAP ECC 6.0) for purposes of reconciliation and reporting.