Increase Community Resilience with Modern Payment Systems

Secure and reliable transactions are essential to maintaining government operations and serving residents. While disruptions to financial life — whether personal or community-wide — can happen, modern payment and disbursement solutions help improve resilience in uncertain times and empower governments to prioritize accessibility, security, and reliability for payers and recipients.

Resilience Improves the Resident Experience

Residents value governmental efficiency, particularly because it demonstrates good stewardship of resources and allows for better planning during economic downturn or crisis management. For example, transitioning from paper checks to digital disbursements allows residents to receive their funds quickly and at a fraction of the cost to the agency. Modern systems also deliver added convenience for residents by introducing payee choice. When receiving a government payment, residents have the option to choose from multiple disbursement methods like digital wallets, bank deposit, instant transfer, prepaid cards, and more.

The ease and flexibility of digital disbursements ensures residents have access to funds when they’re needed the most — even during times of crisis, when traditional banking or payment systems may be unavailable. Residents can rest easy knowing they’ll always be able to receive payments and conduct essential transactions, ultimately making the community more resilient.

More On Digital Payments Systems and Government Resilience

Listen to how governments maintain stability, serve residents more effectively, and adapt to disruption with resilient payment and disbursement systems on this episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast.

Advances in Fraud Prevention and Data-Driven Risk Management

According to recent research conducted by Tyler and the Center for Digital Government, payment security and compliance, particularly fraud prevention and detection, are top concerns of government agencies. Taking a proactive approach is one of the keys to stopping payment fraud in its tracks. Analysis of payment data and trend identification based on bill type enables agencies to set appropriate system parameters for minimum and maximum transaction size, flag deviations in resident spending patterns, duplicate payment controls, and more.

A broad range of technologies are available in modern payment systems to validate transactions and thwart bad actors, while also providing compliance adherence to industry regulations, such as PCI DSS and NACHA. Best practices include using address verification services, multifactor authentication or reCAPTCHA, and network tokenization for online transactions to prevent fraudulent instances, such as card testing. At physical locations, leading agencies use in-person payment devices that encrypt and decrypt every card inserted, dipped, or tapped to ensure chain of custody control and protection of cardholder data.

How Cloud-Based Infrastructure Supports Operational Continuity

Cloud-based payment solutions provide many advantages that improve resilience. They offer enhanced security protocols while the built-in redundancy of the cloud eliminates costly downtime and enables the rapid deployment of system enhancements, such as adoption of new payment methods or additional access to reporting metrics to support financial transparency.

Agency staff and residents can have confidence they are using the most up-to-date and secure technology and that systems will always be available anytime, anywhere.

Working Together to Build Resilient Communities

Resilient payment systems provide secure, flexible, and accessible options for both agencies and the residents they serve. Governments that modernize these systems improve efficiency, reduce risk, and enhance the resident experience, even during a personal or community crisis. At Tyler, we’re focused on delivering the tools and technologies that help governments strengthen their financial operations and build long-term resilience.

About the Authors

Morgan Jines

Morgan Jines is vice president of Payments at Tyler. She has more than 10 years of payments industry experience and is passionate about working with federal, state, and local governments to deliver industry-leading technology and payment solutions that solve challenges, increase efficiency, and improve payer interactions.

Brad Labrum

Brad Labrum is vice president of operations for Disbursements at Tyler, leveraging 15+ years of expertise in payment systems to help state, county, and municipal agencies to drive growth and efficiency. He earned his MBA in Business Management from Southern Utah University in 2002 and later completed a Doctor of Business Administration in Entrepreneurship from the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business in 2020.