Payments Part 2: Challenges for Govt With Sloane Wright

Tyler Podcast Episode 64, 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 government? What challenges do they face? Find out in this episode 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 today and highlight 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 appreciate you joining us. Well, today is part two of our three-part series on payments. Today we're going to look at how payments impact government and how government needs to think about payments as it relates to serving their constituents. Joining us is payments expert Sloane Wright. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Sloane Wright. Well, Sloane, thanks for joining the Tyler Tech Podcast.

Sloane Wright: Hey, thanks for having me. I know this is our second podcast related to payments, and either you haven't looked at the listenership and the ratings yet, or you're at least blindly giving me another shot.

Jeff Harrell: The first one was great. It got a really good response. We promised a three-part series, so we're going to definitely give everyone a three-part series. But part one, very well received. In part one, we focused on payments as it relates to citizens, and today we're going to focus on payments as it relates to the actual government, to governments. So I'm excited to do that, and we'll dive right in. I thought it'd be great to level set on this first at the beginning here and talk about, when we say payments, what exactly do we mean?

Sloane Wright: That sounds like a good place to start. Though I imagine our listeners already have a version of what payments means to them, we'll maybe expound on that a little bit, especially taking this government sector focus. As we mentioned, though, in the last episode, payments is a pretty broad term. But in its simplest form, we are really just describing the ability for a resident or a citizen or a business, really any person or entity, to complete a government transaction, whether in person, maybe it's online, over the phone. Sometimes we call that IVR. Or from previous instructions, and that may sound weird. What do you mean previous instructions? But I'm really kind of honing in on the ability for a constituent to be able to schedule a payment or establish an auto-pay cycle where they can set it up to something that's going to work for them and essentially make installments where that's eligible.

Jeff Harrell: And I know we talked last time about constituents expect payments to be able be made online. We talked a little bit about, hey, if you don't have a bank account, you may need to go to a third party, go in somewhere and make a payment. As it relates to governments, what kind of pressures or really what kind of challenges are governments seeing relative to payments today?

Sloane Wright: That's a good question. As I was thinking through this and our focus on the government segment, four main themes came to mind, and the first one of those is really around technology. So when I look across the landscape of our government customers, I see that they have many disparate systems, many disparate data sources, even some legacy systems, numerous systems of record. So those are some of the challenges, is that our government customers, they have data associated with billers and invoices that they expect to receive payment on, but they're oftentimes spread across a lot of different places.

In the technology space, staying on that theme, I also feel like some of the challenges are it's not just online, right? Yes, you can take payment online potentially, but you also have in-person payment-acceptance challenges. And then I would even throw in IVR. That's the solution where you can essentially dial in via a phone line, and you work with an automated solution to make your payment, as well as many of our government customers still support things like mail-order type scenarios, where you may mail in your bill when it becomes due. So those provide some technology challenges even though it's mail.

And then the last thing I'm thinking about in technology as a challenge is the emerging payments space, so emerging payment methods and the constant flux with technology. So if you want to offer Apple Pay, there is work that has to be done to be able to present Apple Pay to your customers. Or if you want to offer PayPal, there's work that has to be done there. So those feel like challenges in the tech space.

The next area that really strikes me as presenting challenges is reconciliation. Taking in the money is really only part of the battle. You also need the ability to track the entire life cycle of a transaction, and that often means that it is a living order until several months after that initial interaction with that customer. And just to level set with everybody, this is because there is the ability for a user to issue a chargeback. So maybe they don't remember that they made this charge. Maybe somebody else in their household made the charge, and the person receiving the credit card statement doesn't recognize that. But the card networks provide the ability for this chargeback process, and so you have to allot for that, as well as maybe more typical scenarios would be refunds. If a refund needs to be issued, that's still a living order. And the same thing with returns. So reconciliation really felt like a challenge in the government space for me when it comes to payments.

Another one that I wanted to mention is, maybe this is the right name, maybe it's not, but omnichannel payment offerings. In the government space, chasing every method available through numerous technologies seems like it would really be a tough place to be. Tyler Payments works to bring a powerful set of payment methods under one consolidated offering, which really it's aiming to take away the intricate details of these certifications and development efforts and other concerns that some of our government customers may have if they were trying to bring all these payments together in kind of more of a piecemeal approach.

And then the last big bucket theme that struck me as needing some space on our podcast here as a challenge is around PCI. This is the Payment Card Industry compliance standards that are set and put out by all of the card networks. PCI is everyone's concern, and sometimes that can be very scary, especially for a government customer who may not be staffed to take on this big compliance and security burden. So we are focused on providing options that leave our customers with the least amount of responsibility in this space. It is possible, by ensuring our technologies do not really provide that level of exposure to our clients, specifically like sensitive data or practices that would cause them to increase their efforts, it is possible that our government customers can have a very small scope in their PCI concern.

 

Jeff Harrell: I'm curious, Sloane. I know pre-pandemic, I wouldn't have even thought about ordering lunch online, paying online, having it delivered to my house. I know the pandemic changed a lot of things. I think the way people take payments and expect to be able to pay is one of those things. And I'm curious, from a government's perspective, what impact did the pandemic have? You mentioned these four buckets. I imagine omnichannel may be one. But what were some of the things, the pressures that the pandemic put on government?

Sloane Wright: A couple of thoughts here. The pandemic, as we all know, has ultimately forced us to rethink our contingency plans when we're not able to leverage our traditional brick-and-mortar locations. That's across the board. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. Everybody has had to spend some time taking a hard look at this approach. In my opinion ... I hope opinions are allowed on the podcast.

Jeff Harrell: They're encouraged.

Sloane Wright: But in my opinion, this was one of the bigger areas that had to be solved for very quickly to enable government to remain operational as we all got adjusted to such rapid and significant change. So maybe just diving in on that just a little bit, for many government entities, they already had shifted a lot of services to the online space even pre-pandemic. But I think the key highlight here that we all discovered is online does not necessarily solve for everything. It doesn't solve for every use case. If it did, we wouldn't have brick and mortars anymore, right?

So there are still needs for those in-person interactions and the ability to service customers who may not have the ability to process their transactions online. There are many circumstances, Jeff, that may cause the citizen to need to interact with the person who can accept cash. Maybe this is a cash-preferred person, and we are seeing that on a more frequent basis, especially if you think about it in terms of the pandemic, especially when offices were either not open during the pandemic or not accessible due to limited or traditional office hours.

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

Tyler Connect, it's our big annual user conference, and registration is open. So join us in San Antonio, Texas, May 7th through May 10th of this year. You'll network. You'll learn. You will grow, and you will save if you go to tylertech.com/connect for early-bird registration. That's Tyler Tech Connect May 7th through May 10th.

Something you said there sparked a thought, Sloane. I've got a local ... And I try not to eat too much fast food, but there's a local fast-food establishment that is near my home that I eat at every once in a while. Let's just say that, every once in a while. And I went in and ordered, and it was the first time that the service was not excellent. And as I sat there waiting for my food, because usually the food's there. It's ready to go. As I sat there waiting for my food, I noticed that there's DoorDash drivers coming in. I noticed that there was people who had ordered and waiting for their food at the curb. I noticed people waiting in line inside. I noticed people going through the drive-through. And I'm like, "They're trying to serve so many needs." And you just hit on this: the needs of citizens are great. What are the challenges for governments who aren't able to adapt and make some changes and able to solve for all these different use cases? What are those challenges for them?

Sloane Wright: I think that's a great thought-provoking example that you gave with the DoorDashes, et cetera, of the world. I think I knew kind of in the ether that those services existed, but I had never used them pre-pandemic, and the popularity of those services absolutely skyrocketed. Those are virtual orders, so you've got to either be able to limit the way that those are coming in because you have a finite amount of team members there that can fulfill the order. So that's where online really has helped our government partners.

But I think the payment space is continuously evolving right now, and in my opinion, we're seeing some of the most movement with the ways that customers are wanting to make payments. To expand on that a little bit, cash is very much alive and well, and this probably resonates with many of our listeners who may have oversight of branch offices that serve the public. I think this is probably an area that does cause our government offices to still have legacy cash practices, where they've got so many stations set up with team members who have cash drawers, and they can take these customers in and those types of things. But this is one area where our government partners, they do have the ability to outsource some of the cash that typically would be flowing in to their offices.

So kind of thinking about it with your GrubHub example or your DoorDash example, there's only so many team members that are there that can fill those needs right now. But what if there was a way to leverage a larger network to take that cash in and the government still gets receipt of those funds just like they would if it was a credit card or any other method? I think it goes without saying, but just through this discussion too, managing cash comes with its own set of challenges, and that's why we've taken steps to partner with networks like the CheckFreePay Network to offer our customers the ability to either move that cash completely out of their branches or to at least augment where the cash is accepted.

Adding this option also effectively expands your hours of operation to a segment of the market, Jeff, that may or may not work a traditional or a flexible schedule. They may also even come in and see your scenario, where it's too busy, and I'm not going to be able to sit here and wait to be the next in line. So they may need to go and make some other arrangements there.

Jeff Harrell: Any other government challenges that we should be aware of?

Sloane Wright: Another payment channel that I think is popular in the space and centered around alternative payments and peer-to-peer networks. One example, just to make sure we're kind of level set here, of an alternative payment channel would be PayPal, for instance, which allows a customer to store numerous payment methods within a digital wallet. It provides them essentially with choice and convenience during the checkout experience. And also, an offering like a PayPal may also provide access to services like buy now, pay later, which that may sound really scary in the government space. But going back to what I said a minute ago, Tyler's endeavoring to integrate and build payment solutions that allow our government customers to be able to depend on the settlement times and the reconciliations and all of those concerns that they have. So don't let that scare you, right? Don't let the buy now, pay later scare you. It's not the government waiting for the money. Rather, it's just a different method that gives customers choice.

We also heard a lot about crypto. I think that was maybe six months ago. We were on this pinnacle of let's get crypto, let's get crypto. And then all of a sudden, that trajectory kind of changed a bit. But either way, Tyler's technology scaled to meet the market where that demand was. And by doing that, I can't even imagine how many hours that saved some of our government customers who were pushing for availability of crypto as a payment method. It saved them from having to go and scale their own technologies for that.

Maybe sticking, Jeff, and just cut me off anytime. But just sticking with the PayPal line for a moment, I think it is maybe very timely to at least share with our listeners that we are actively engaged in preparing our Tyler payment solutions to also be able to accept Venmo as a payment method. This is a very popular peer-to-peer type network that's widely leveraged in the US. So I think that'll be an area that really helps to solve for some challenges. Especially as the population structure and who the government's customer is, as that continues to evolve and change, we're just really seeing this big push in the market for alternative financial institutions and alternative means of making payments that are maybe outside your traditional bank or credit union type of concept. So those are all things that we're trying to make sure that we get solidified within our solution.

Jeff Harrell: So talk to us a little bit about Tyler Payments and what you guys are focused on to really help governments solve these same issues. 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: I really think that, maybe to sum this up, Tyler offers an entire suite of fully featured payment options. And let this one sink in for a second: we do that with a dedicated payments team of more than 100 team members. So just think about it. Even in your own government capacity, you likely have nowhere near a hundred team members that are focused and dedicated on payments, all the nuances of payments: compliance, reconciliation, the technology, everything that goes in that suite.

But one of the solutions that I would like to highlight to this audience today is our Payments Enterprise Portal. And the reason I want to highlight it is Payments Enterprise Portal is designed to be the easy button for our government clients. So hopefully, if I had lost anybody on the podcast up to this point, you heard easy button and you are tuned back in because everybody wants the easy way to get into the space and to expand their offering.

The solution also has shopping-cart capabilities. IVRs we talked about earlier, comes right out of the box. Auto and scheduled payments. And I think, too, this is an added benefit for your customers: The solution provides the user with a history of their transactions and a secure digital wallet where they can store their payment methods down for really easy access and interaction with your agency in the future. This solution is fully featured, and I would highly recommend for any of our listeners to engage and work with their Tyler sales rep to learn how this could accelerate their journey in the payment space.

Jeff Harrell: Sloane, if someone wants to learn a little bit more, is there a place they can go to do that?

Sloane Wright: Absolutely. I think the best place to go, Jeff, and there's information out here available too, so you can do a little self-service as well, which I think, in this day and age, everybody likes the more information they can get on the web. But I would recommend any of our listeners to go to tylertech.com/payments. We've got a special place on the Tyler Tech website that's designed just for payment processing.

Jeff Harrell: Super easy. And if someone wanted to actually speak to a person ... We're trying to solve for maybe different use cases. If someone wanted to actually talk with someone about that, is their sales representative the best place to do that?

Sloane Wright: Absolutely. I certainly would say reach out to your Tyler sales rep. Let them know that you want to have a deeper discussion on how Tyler can help streamline your ability to take payments. Maybe it's across more channels. Maybe you're not taking payments at all. Kind of any question in the payment space. And we're here to help meet your citizens' needs and meet your citizens, quite frankly, where they are. And Jeff, if you go back and listen, or maybe this spawns a memory from episode one, but I know I said this last time. But in fairness, I did caveat it with "I always like to say." And what I always like to say and reiterate is that we don't charge to sit down and listen to the needs of our government customers. So don't be shy or scared to reach out for whatever reason. Your outreach may not only serve your needs, but quite frankly, it may also help bring awareness to new challenges that you may be facing in the market and things that we could consider adding into our roadmap to help provide a stronger solution across the US.

Jeff Harrell: That's great. I appreciate that. I know we looked a little more closely today at governments, and this is part two. Part three, we're going to look at trends. You may have hinted at a few of them. I'm thinking maybe things like crypto, Venmo. What are some of the things we'll be talking about in the third part of this three-part series?

Sloane Wright: Our goal in parts one and two have really been, I think, Jeff, to set the foundation for the problem, both from the citizen and the government side of the house. In episode three, I think we're going to plan to expand our view broader than just the ability to pay your bill with a credit card. Rather, take a deeper dive on some of the emerging payment methods and accepted methods to get our audience thinking about what is to come. We also may highlight some of the emerging technology that Tyler's investing in specific to payment insights, which is a major data and insights initiative that'll help our customers to better visualize and forecast and understand their payments business in a manner that's going to reach far beyond what they may be exposed to through traditional reporting.

And we're also kicking off a specialized product focus on fraud. Specifically, we're taking a deep dive with some of our customers to understand how they monitor and identify and track and prevent various different fraud scenarios. And we're doing this in an effort to really understand how we can enhance the solutions that we were talking about today with some best-in-breed machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies. So that may expand us into podcast four and five, possibly. I don't know. Maybe it's wishful thinking. But there's just a whole area of expertise in payments that extends beyond the traditional receiving and accounting for the funds. There's just this whole other technology road that is built to support these solutions.

Jeff Harrell: Love it. Who knew payments could be so fascinating?

Sloane Wright: Well, I did.

Jeff Harrell: You did. That's why we had you on the podcast.

Sloane Wright: Yeah. Hopefully, all of our listeners do now as well. And if for anything, it maybe at least highlights that there is a lot going on in the payment space, and it shouldn't be something that you take on lightly. You really should identify and work with a partner that's going to help you meet all the goals that you're trying to achieve.

Jeff Harrell: Well, Sloane, really appreciate your expertise and insight in this space, and certainly appreciate part two here and excited to talk again in a couple weeks about trends in the payment space. So thanks so much again for joining the Tyler Tech Podcast.

Sloane Wright: Absolutely. I look forward to it. See you soon.

Jeff Harrell: Well, I hope you enjoyed part two, and I'm very excited for part three, as we look forward. We look into the trends happening in the payment space, including PayPal, Venmo, cryptocurrency, and the like. That's part three of the three-part series. Well, thanks so much for joining the Tyler Tech Podcast. We have lots of great episodes planned for 2023, so please subscribe.

Until next time, this is Jeff Harrell, Director of Content Marketing for Tyler Technologies. We'll talk to you soon.