Payments Part 1: Citizen Expectations With Sloane Wright

Tyler Podcast Episode 61, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Host and Content Marketing Director Jeff Harrell – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

Why are payments important to citizens? And what payment challenges do citizens face? How have expectations changed after the pandemic? We dive into this topic with payments expert Sloane Wright.

Sloane is an experienced executive working with federal, state and local governments to deliver award winning technology and payment solutions for almost two decades with Tyler. He has led State division operations in the states of Alabama, Indiana and Florida and has been responsible for using innovation and technology to make all government agencies, including departments of transportation and motor vehicles, more accessible, secure and convenient for businesses and citizens.

Transcript

Jeff Harrell: From Tyler Technologies, it's the Tyler Tech podcast where we talk about issues facing communities and the people, places, and technology making a difference. My name is Jeff Harrell. I'm the director of content marketing here at Tyler, and I'm glad that you joined me. Well, how does money move from citizens to government to pay for government services like utilities and other things?

What if you do not have a traditional bank account or want to pay with a check or cash, or, my goodness, even PayPal or cryptocurrency? Lots of interesting things relative to payments, and that is our focus today. In fact, we're gonna do a three-part series around payments, and today is part one. We're going to look at government payments and how new citizens expectations impact payments with Sloane Wright.

Sloane is an experienced executive working with federal, state, and local governments to deliver award-winning technology and payment solutions for gosh, nearly two decades. He is part of Tyler Technologies and has led the state division operations in the states of Alabama, Indiana, Florida, and has been responsible for using innovation and technology to make all government agencies, including the Department of Transportation and Motor Vehicles more accessible, secure, and convenient for businesses and citizens.

He is absolutely an expert in this space and the perfect person to talk to. So without further ado, here is part one of our three part series around payments with Sloane Wright.

Sloane Wright: Thank you for having me.

Jeff Harrell: I'm very excited and we're going to do a three-part series, and today we're gonna focus on payments around citizens, new citizen expectations. But I thought it'd be important to take a bit of a step back and just have you talk about payments at a high level.

When we define payments, what are we talking about?

Sloane Wright: Payments is a broad term, Jeff, but in its simplest form, we are describing the ability for a resident, or a citizen or a business, or really any person or entity to complete a government transaction, whether they're in person, online, over the phone, or from previous instructions, such as like a scheduled payment or an autopay mechanism.

Then once they select their modality or the method in which they want to pay, then this payment is recorded in a financial system of record. Which starts a long living life cycle of this specific transaction, which is important, as a payment transaction is not immutable. And it may experience updates or changes based on activities such as chargebacks or refunds, for example.

Jeff Harrell: And I know today we're going to focus in on citizens and what payments mean to citizens. So talk to us a little bit about the challenges. What are the challenges that citizens face relative to payments?

Sloane Wright: Perfect. Well, I think that sometimes when solutioning for the ability to take payments, it's oftentimes easy to think of how the majority of people will conduct a payment, which is with a credit card or a debit card, or maybe a check, whether it's processed in person or digitally.

However, not all citizens or residents will have access to these highly accepted payment methods. As a matter of fact, many people in the US may have difficulties in establishing a traditional bank account or opening a credit card account, for instance. And as a matter of fact, there was a study a few years ago that was conducted by the FDIC that indicated there are more than 30 million US households that are either unbanked or underbanked, meaning that they have no FDIC insured account, or that they may also obtain financial services from non-bank alternative providers like a PayPal or a Venmo, for example. And this is a figure that really took me by surprise and a barrier for many people, as you can imagine, for a variety of reasons to be able to remit funds to their government.

And, Jeff, maybe another challenge to think about as well is that citizens may not always work a schedule that may provide them with the flexibility to visit a government office during traditional office hours. And this is where online services are key, but should be solutioned in the mindset that a citizen may need to pay with cash, for instance, when a government office may not be open.

Jeff Harrell: So, Sloane, I'm interested, does a lot of the variation in the way people want to pay or use payments vary by generations? So in other words, my dad, who's a baby boomer, still writes out a check, still wants to pay with cash, while my daughter who is Gen Z wants to pay with her phone. Are we seeing some generational differences with payments?

Sloane Wright: Absolutely. And I think that's also where we're seeing a lot of uptick in alternative payment methods. Not everybody may qualify for a traditional banking method, whether it be a bank account or a credit card, et cetera. But it may also be that people are cash preferred, where they prefer to leverage cash and peer to peer type systems where they're able to move money, leveraging the tools that make the most sense for them.

But it may also be that people are maybe cash preferred, uh, where, where they prefer to leverage cash and peer to peer type systems where they're able. To move money, leveraging the tools that, that make the most sense for them. Another example, Jeff, is, and you may, you may think of this when I say it, and you'll be like, man, that feels like a, like a legacy technology.

Another example, Jeff, is IVR [interactive voice response]. It still has a fairly high adoption rate and it is in that boomer type population. So they would much prefer to pick up the phone, even if there's not a person on the other end, and conduct that transaction via the phone and via their touch pad. So each of these payment methods are highly relevant in the space and we do see a transition that's occurring, but that transition at this point is really to add some alternative payment mechanisms into the ecosystem.

 

Jeff Harrell: I could see how it'd be a challenge for government. You, you've got to deal with each of those variations, each of those generations differently. And I know we're, I'm excited about part three of this series where we'll talk a little bit more about trends and some of the things, alternative methods of payments that you mentioned.

But talk to us a little bit. I know we've all been through the pandemic. It accelerated a lot of things in our lives, including, hey, my dad's had to learn how to use Zoom, because, you know, that's, that's how people meet now a lot of times. So have the expectations that citizens have. Especially around payments change because of the pandemic. Just because of, you know, where we are as a society.

Sloane Wright: You know, when, when you said your dad has had to learn Zoom, it, it made me think of the, the phrase that everybody experienced in the pandemic, which is, “Hey, Jeff, you're on mute.” Right? So, I think we, we all were in that boat and it's just incredible to think about the things that did change. And life is different now, but I'm not sure that the pandemic accelerated differing expectations or if it really just underscored a need that we have not done a great job at addressing these things in the past.

You know, as I mentioned a few moments ago, there’re somewhere around 13% of US households that may be unbanked or underbanked. And you know, when transacting with government, there's usually only one authority to complete your transaction with. And so it's likely that these individuals have traditionally had to maybe adjust their schedule.

Or miss work or find transportation or some other challenge to find their way to a brick-and-mortar location to conduct their business. And in some cases, the individual may have to buy, literally pay for a prepaid debit card so that they can conduct their transaction online. Or they may have to buy a money order or some other instrument as they do not have a bank account like we talked about.

I think this is an area that we can do better in to make sure we're finding ways to meet our citizens and, and our residents where they are, and still find ways to provide them with conveniences in channels that may be more accessible to.

Jeff Harrell: And what's the risk to government if they don't think about those things and aren't able to adapt with the new needs and the changing needs of their citizens?

Sloane Wright: You know, this is a tricky one because as I mentioned, there's usually only one authority or one official source to conduct a government transaction with. But, that said, the risk is that people are not able to meet their obligations in a timely manner. Potentially triggering things like penalties or delays in receipt of funds.

Perhaps another risk is also increased outreach and collection efforts on a government team that's potentially already running lean, which causes additional strain and takes attention away from other areas that could possibly be more beneficial for the community.

Jeff Harrell: I'll be back with my conversation with Sloane Wright in just a moment.

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Now back to my conversation with Sloane Wright.

Well then let's move a little bit our focus towards solutions. I know this is the world that you live, and we're looking at how do we help solve some of these problems. So what are some of the solutions that are available to government as they consider addressing this?

Sloane Wright: For sure. And, and maybe this is the preview for, for some of the rest of the series. Yeah. But, we are starting to see alternative payment channels and more and more procurement requests. So, so I think governments are starting to solve for these challenges when, when considering payment acceptance channels, it's easy to think narrowly with a focus on face to face transactions or online transactions through a website or a web application. In addition to these common channels, government entities should also consider in-person channels at, and this is where the twist is, right, in-person channels, at private sector partner locations that may be more convenient to access and have later operating hours than a traditional government office.

I think ensuring mobile channels are up to date and accessible is key. You know, maybe consider providing, like we discussed, that IVR phone-based channel and implement non-traditional financial channels such as PayPal. You know, that's kind of that alternative payment space.

From a solutions perspective, Jeff, there are checkout technologies and partnerships that are available to provide governments with the ability to accept payments over these alternative channels. Specifically, and I'll speak for Tyler specifically, Tyler provides bill presentment technologies that will bring all of these offerings together into one place, which will allow for the citizen or the resident to choose the most convenient way to complete their transaction, and that convenience is gonna be different for everybody, right? It, it could mean that, that this person may prefer to go to a participating grocery store or retail location that can work with a citizen to remit payment in cash for their specific government bill, even if it's something like a property tax payment, right?

Jeff Harrell: Sloane, here at Tyler, you know, our, our passion really is around empowering the public sector. I know you are really focused on this space and you know, our, our heart here at Tyler is to really serve as a guide to help governments figure some of these things out. So can you talk a little bit about some of the things that you're working on to help enable some of the clients that you're working with to do this?

Sloane Wright: Tyler would like to partner with government to provide a bill presentment or a checkout technology that'll scale to alternative payment channels. We have relationships with the largest processors in the US, which include a cash acceptance network of more than 30,000 retailers across the country, as well as a partnership with big entities like PayPal, which brings access to services like Venmo.

Uh, many of you've probably heard of buy now, pay later services, and even the ability to transact with one of the, the more cutting-edge technologies, cryptocurrency. Tyler can, can help by providing the technology that will connect to your government backend systems. To seamlessly provide the citizen or the payee with the ability to search for their bill and to choose a payment method or frequency that will work for them.

This can be captured on what I like to call a single pane of glass and provide one integration point for your backend systems and, and you know, Jeff, we're for, for the audience here, we're, we're doing the hard work of certifying and integrating with each of these payment methods so that your government systems do not have to go through that individual effort over and over again for each system that you might support, rather you provide us with the access to the billing data. It could be as simple as through a file or an API or some other means, and then we provide the payment portal to interact with your constituent. We make sure that it's mobile friendly.

We, we make sure that we can provide access to these alternate channels for you.

Jeff Harrell: And Sloane, I know we've got this three parts for a reason we're really excited about. Part two, we'll talk about government more specifically. We looked at citizens a little bit more today. And then the third part will be those trends we talked about.

But if someone's listening right now and going, you know what, we've gotta figure this out. We know that there's some expectations that citizens are are looking for from. If someone wanted to learn more, what's a best next step for them?

Sloane Wright: You know, I would say we want to make this as easy and seamless as possible for our government partners.

You know, just simply reach out to your Tyler sales rep that you work with today on any of the Tyler products and solutions, and let them know that you want to have a deeper discussion on how Tyler can help streamline your ability to take payments across more channels and to help you meet your citizens — and this is probably key — meet your citizens where they are. I always like to say that, that we do not charge to sit down and listen to the needs of our government partners, so don't be shy, or you know, timid about reaching out for whatever reason, your outreach may not only serve your needs, but it may also help bring our awareness to new challenges that may be related to your specific market.

And that may help us to be able to, to sit down and come up with solutions that'll help others in, in your same situation across the U.S.

Jeff Harrell: And if someone wanted to get in touch with you or, or learn more, what's the best place for them?

Sloane Wright: So, so twofold. As I mentioned, I would certainly start with your Tyler sales rep if you have somebody established, and if not, we make it really simple.

We've got a dedicated space at tylertech.com/payments. So that's tylertech.com/payments, and that'll take you, uh, to a page where you can learn more about the solutions that Tyler offers in the payment space, as well as some contact information.

Jeff Harrell: Well, I love it, Sloane, and we've been teasing this a little bit, but I'd like to talk about, this is part one of a three-part series. Tell us a little bit about what we're gonna talk about in part two and part three.

Tell us a little bit about what we're gonna talk about in part two and part three.

Sloane Wright: The next two episodes will cover how payment expectations impact government as well as trends that we are seeing in the government space. Our primary focus will be to take a deeper dive into how some of these expectations are driving the need for new and enhanced technology.

This may seem like a no-brainer to most, but we're gonna try to keep things relevant to the government sector. With a specific focus on solutions that can be flexible enough to be leveraged in an ecosystem of many disparate systems. So not, we all know, not all these government systems are connected. Um, there's probably, you know, 50 plus systems in, in any government entity that, that we engage with on a daily basis.

So, specifically, considering technologies that provide a path to play well with those heavy backend systems that may take our government partners a lot of time to modernize. And then once we set the foundation for the technology, then we'll plan to expand our view broader than just the ability to pay your bill with a credit card as we discuss trends in that third and final episode.

Jeff Harrell: Well, I'm excited. This was great. Excited for part two and part three as well. Sloane, thanks so much for, for sharing with us today and for joining the podcast.

Sloane Wright: Thanks for having me. This was great.

Jeff Harrell:

Well, there is certainly a lot more to payments than I had anticipated and really enjoyed this first part of a three-part series we were doing around payments, looking today at what it means to citizens and new citizen expectations. And next episode we're going to talk a little bit about how payment expectations impact government and Sloane Wright will be back again to do that with us. Well, thanks so much for listening to the Tyler Tech podcast. We have a lot of great episodes planned, so please subscribe.

My name is Jeff Harrell. I'm the director of content marketing for Tyler Technologies. We'll talk to you soon.