Case Studies

Sandwell and Walsall Council

This study illustrates how SpartaPay benefited the local community and council to reach more people

The Issues

• Low revenue collection.
• High unemployed and lack of low cost banking.
• Credit Unions membership high credit union, 5,500 people out of 11,400.
• No integrated approach to payments.
• No smartcards in operation.
• High number of banks but most people felt they were too expensive and remote.

The task: produce integrated payment solution using the credit union system for people so they could use the credit union to open personal accounts online or at the offices of the Credit Union, pay into and access personal accounts online and pay for goods and services without credit cards at price they felt they could afford.

The Solution:

SpartaPay in collaboration with Routeco, Sharp, Unicard, managed by Sheffield E-Gov Team, Back Country Knowledge Society

• Created software to integrate remotely from the Credit Union to its secure servers to use of its payment services
• Allowed the Credit Union and SpartaPay to update account information daily
• Created ID and secure access management using smartcards and PKI using JAVA cards by SHARP
• Allowed synchronisation of SpartaPay data base and Credit Union data base via the local Council so each had the same information in real time
• Local merchant to collect payments from users

The result: Now Walsall Credit Union (Walsave) can offer its members better facilities and safer payment experiences more securely using smartcards with better and wider payment collection and account management functions at economic cost that is beneficial to all parties