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Mobile Wallets Continue to Increase

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Mobile payment transactions are on the rise, with market researchers expecting an increase of more than 200% in mobile payment transactions in 2017. This trend has left many courts, government agencies, and legal agencies wondering how the growing popularity of mobile wallets will affect court and other payment processing.

Mobile Wallets Defined

A mobile wallet, as its name implies, is simply a virtual version of a physical wallet. It can store payment debit and credit card information, coupons, reward cards, and the like on a mobile device, enabling users to pay merchants who offer mobile payment services. Mobile wallet services, such as Apple Pay and Android Pay, ease the payment process for both users and those accepting payments.

Benefits of Mobile Wallets

Gartner forecasts that the worldwide mobile payment market will have more than 450 million users and a transaction value of more than $721 billion in 2017. With this incredible surge in the adoption of mobile payment applications and services comes opportunities for both government agencies and their citizens. So, what are the benefits to offering mobile wallet services?

  • Decreased payment time. With transactions processed immediately, payment reaches the agency quickly and efficiently.
  • Better security. Mobile wallets are more secure than their physical counterparts, giving users and agencies better peace of mind.
  • Convenient and efficient. Paper receipts are always inconvenient to keep. While it is important to keep a record of your transactions, paper receipts are not convenient nor efficient. Being able to have utilized mobile wallet services eliminates that stress.

Mobile Wallets Increase Payment Options in Government Agencies

As with financial institutions and retailers, government agencies can benefit from the flexibility and ease of use offered by mobile payment transactions. By giving citizens the ability to pay with debit and credit cards, Apple Pay and Android Pay, government agencies enable convenient payment in whatever format works best for citizens. This approach helps ensure quick and timely payment without processing hassles and overhead and enables courts and government agencies to improve customer service while reducing processing burden.
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NFC Payments in 2017 and Beyond

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Likely, you’ve heard of Bluetooth, radio-frequency identification (RFID), or quick response (QR) codes but perhaps haven’t heard of the umbrella term near field communication (NFC). NFC is contactless communication of wireless data transferred between devices, such as tablets, card readers, and smartphones. The data detects and enables technology in close proximity to communicate without the need for an internet connection. Using RFID technology, an NFC chip operates as part of a wireless link. Being able to activate and transfer data between devices then takes place and therefore, where mobile payments can be accomplished.

Even as users and service providers alike work to wrap their heads around mobile payments, the mobile payment industry continues to rapidly evolve, with major growth taking place in the NFC payment arena. As the technology has evolved, it has increased the range, speed, and messaging capacity of wireless devices.

NFC Is Here to Stay

If you’ve invested in the latest Apple phone, you’ve already felt the push toward NFC technology—Apple didn’t include a physical headphone jack, forcing users to embrace wireless connectivity to connect their wireless headphones to the phone. Through experiences like these, users will become more comfortable with wireless technology, and wireless payments will continue to become ubiquitous.

Benefits of Accepting NFC Payments

As mentioned in our recent mobile point-of-sale (POS) post, wireless payment offers many benefits to government agencies. In addition to providing another payment option, NFC payment platforms make the payment process easier, more secure, and more efficient. With credit and debit card data stored on a mobile device through an NFC tag, citizens can simply use NFC to connect to an agency payment processing NFC device to make payments. These payments process efficiently, making the funds quickly available to courts and making the whole process as easy as swiping a device.

NFC for Government Payments

With wireless technology employed for everything from jamming out to iTunes to photo sharing among devices, it was only a matter of time before NFC payments became popular. For busy moms checking out at the grocery store to hipsters buying a flat white at the coffee shop, NFC is becoming the norm. By offering mobile payment processing through NFC technology, courts and government agencies can increase efficiency, improve payment security, and enable convenient payment methods to citizens.
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5 Ways to Create Visible Public Access to Justice

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The nationwide “Justice for All” forum is examining ways to ensure justice is accessible to low-income individuals, those facing social injustices and hardship, and citizens with a lack of payment options. This second part of the series provides 5 ways to create visible public access to justice for the citizens you serve.

Accessible Justice Initiatives

Crucial to the success of the Justice for All forum is the need to spread the word and ensure initiatives and services meant to help modest and low-income individuals are visible and known to the citizens that can benefit from these programs. Consider the following initiatives, many of which have been highlighted by the Center for Court Innovation, each ensuring public access to justice is within reach:

  1. Provide representation for those facing eviction. Stable housing is recognized as a major contributor to a family’s well-being. However, many families face eviction without legal representation. In New York City, Poverty Justice Solutions is addressing this problem by offering legal help from recent law school grads.
  2. Offer an arena to solve disputes cooperatively. Peacemaking programs in Brooklyn and Syracuse use traditional Native American practices in which trained volunteers help parties involved in a dispute not only resolve the problem at hand but also work to heal and strengthen the relationship of those involved. This approach builds community through collaboratively “talking it out.”
  3. Ensure the underrepresented have access to legal services. In both Harlem and Red Hook, courts are taking unconventional approaches to ensure increased access to legal services for underrepresented litigants in an effort to spur neighborhood renewal, reduce crime, prevent eviction, and more.
  4. Link parents with support programs. To help non-custodial parents pay child support and improve parenting skills, a partnership of legal and community-based programs offer these parents services to help them be better parents—a win-win for the parents, children, and community.
  5. Let citizens know they can conveniently make payments. Offering payment options that include one-time, recurring, late, and partial payment gives citizens the best chance to make payments in a method that is most convenient and doable for them. This approach prevents undue hardship and greatly improves the likelihood of courts receiving payment.

Operational Benefits to the Court

By making these types of initiatives available and visible to citizens and embracing technology to help make these programs possible, courts not only improve access to justice for all but also gain operational benefits for the court. For example, with the right initiatives and tools, courts can:

  • Implement workload tools to assists judges when making case assignments
  • Enhance reporting capabilities
  • More efficiently manage and resolve cases
  • Adopt case processing time standards
  • Put in place performance, customer service, and case management measures that help citizens while lessening the load on court staff

(Source: Arizona Supreme Court, Advancing Justice Together)

An Approach for All

Unconventional programs and initiatives combined with technology that enables flexible payment options helps bring justice to all while easing court processing. This approach facilitates the reallocation of court efforts and funds from timely manual processing to programs that visibly improve public access to justice.
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Why PCI Compliance Is Still Important

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PCI compliance can seem like one more burden on payment processors, but maintaining compliance offers security-related benefits to courts and government agencies.

PCI Compliance 101

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of security standards developed by an independent body to ensure that any company that accepts, processes, stores, or transmits credit card information does so in a secure manner. Developed in 2006, the PCI standard is designed to make sure all credit card processors are held to a security baseline.

Understanding the PCI Levels

The PCI defines levels of compliance to determine an organization’s risk and appropriate security requirements based on their combined transaction volume over a 12-month period—including credit, debit, and prepaid cards. The four levels of compliance are:

PCI Compliance Level 1
More than 6 million Visa and/or Mastercard transactions processed per year

Validation Requirements:

  • Annual Report on Compliance (“ROC”) by Qualified Security Assessor (“QSA”) – also commonly known as a Level 1 onsite assessment – or internal auditor if signed by officer of the company
  • Quarterly network scan by Approved Scan Vendor (ASV)
  • Attestation of Compliance Form

PCI Compliance Level 2
1 million to 6 million Visa and/or Mastercard transactions processed per year

Validation Requirements:

  • Annual Self-Assessment Questionnaire (“SAQ”)
  • Quarterly network scan by ASV
  • Attestation of Compliance Form

PCI Compliance Level 3
20,000 to 1 million Visa and/or Mastercard e-commerce transactions processed per year

Validation Requirements:

  • Annual Self-Assessment Questionnaire (“SAQ”)
  • Quarterly network scan by ASV
  • Attestation of Compliance Form

PCI Compliance Level 4
Less than 20,000 Visa and/or Mastercard e-commerce transactions processed per year as well as all other companies that process as many as 1 million Visa transactions per year

Validation Requirements:

  • Annual Self-Assessment Questionnaire (“SAQ”)
  • Quarterly network scan by ASV
  • Attestation of Compliance Form. Note: Ultimately, Compliance validation requirements set by acquirer

An organization’s level of compliance is determined by card brands based on processing volume. Thus, a service provider might start at level 4 and over time become a level 1 provider as a result of an increase in the number of transactions processed; maintaining compliance with PCI DSS is crucial.

The Security Benefits of PCI Compliance

In addition to being good security practices, PCI compliance can help courts and government agencies ensure they are maintaining a secure environment. The PCI standard facilitates continual identification of developing and ongoing threats and vulnerabilities, helping your organization stay safe from data breaches.

Consider, for example, the Home Depot data breach where hackers used malware-infected software to steal millions of customer credit and debit card numbers. Proper implementation of PCI standards, which require routine vulnerability scans among additional security processes, would have saved the company the $19.5 million in settlement costs as well as the brand damage done. Additional PCI protocols that help protect from malware and other attacks include requirements for:

  • Proper implementation of role-based security as well as user authentication
  • Secured connections for sensitive data transmissions
  • Detailed logging for audit reporting
  • Employment of strong encryption

Do you know the PCI compliance level of your service provider?

Compliance requirements can be overwhelming but partnering with the right payment services provider, government agencies can rest assured their payment transaction processes are compliant and secure. In addition, seeking out a payment services provider who qualifies as a “PCI Compliance Level 1” means you do not have to worry about finding and vetting another payment services partner should your annual transaction volume increase over time. You’re covered, secure, and compliant.
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How CMS Integration with Payment Processing Benefits Courts

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Integrating your case management system (CMS) and payment processing solution might seem intimidating or complex. For instance, many government agencies are challenged with fragmented data, costly manual processes, delayed ticket notifications, cross-functional roadblocks, and inconsistent public access points. CMS integration does not add to the problem; rather, it is the solution to the problem.

CMS Integration Helps You Do More with Less

Many courts face decisions around implementing the best payment processing solution and CMS to effectively support its expanding operations. Even courts with access to sophisticated technologies can quickly become entangled with a complex application landscape. An effective CMS integration benefits courts and simplifies payment processing in the following ways:

  • Helps to improve the accuracy of records and citizen data.
  • Performs consistently so that administrators can rely on the data without question.
  • Aids in reducing cash handling and accounting errors.
  • Provides the ability to automate reconciliation.
  • Enables integration with multiple platforms, including cash, check, ACH, mobile payment, custom-branded payment sites, and off-premise payment locations.

Court and government administration is a stressful profession. With limited staff and budgets, it can be hard for agencies large and small to find the bandwidth needed to efficiently serve citizens. Finding a payment processing solutions that easily integrates with a CMS provides courts with the means to handle reporting, reconciliation, and payments in a convenient and efficient manner.

An Overview of CMS Integration Benefits

The promise of CMS integration with payment processing is alluring to many courts; however, they fear a steep learning curve along with a misunderstanding of the complexities associated with integrating a new system. Regardless of your current CMS or financial software system, a reliable provider will offer a flexible payment solution that integrates seamlessly, making reporting, reconciliation, and payments easy and secure for you and your staff.

Payment processing integrated with CMS or financial management software offers a host of benefits:

  • From citation origination and case processing to accepting payments, integrating applications saves money and improves results.
  • Integration with existing software is easy and can be configured to best suit a variety of setups, including web and cloud-based, hosted, on-premises, mainframe, and client-server integrations.
  • A knowledgeable and experienced solution provider will offer support, even if you decide to upgrade or change your system provider.

As a result of the widespread technology improvements in the payment processing industry, nCourt is helping to reshape how courts and government agencies approach their operational challenges. We achieve this with multiple integration options that improve the speed, accuracy, centralization, and security of data exchanged between payment and CMS platforms.

CMS Implementation is Hard … But Integration Can Be Easy

CMS with payment integration benefits an entire court system including its citizens; however, many courts are operating on an “if-it’s-not-broken, don’t-fix-it” mentality that relegates them to an understaffed, overburdened mode. Fear of technology constraints—and change in general—are causing courts of all sizes to miss out on the many benefits a CMS integration can provide. This type of integration enables you to more proficiently serve citizens with the resources on hand—doing a better job more effectively and with less effort. Don’t miss out! Simply request your free payment processing demo to see how we can help!
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What is Mobile Point-of-Sale (mPOS) Technology?

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Mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) technology enables payment through online, tablet, and mobile phone avenues and it is growing in popularity by the moment. Basically, with an mPOS app installed, this technology makes a wireless device act as a cash register or electronic point-of-sale terminal. The app is linked to the users’ credit card or bank account, and the business or organization taking payment simply uses a digital reader to conduct the whole transaction. So instead of carrying a wallet and checkbook and going through a manual payment process, mPOS simplifies payment by using whatever wireless device works best for the user.

A report from Global Market Insights reveals the current widespread adoption of mPOS technology as well as its bright future. According to the report, mPOS terminals will have a compound annual growth rate of more than 19% from 2016 through 2023. At this rate, payment via wireless technology will quickly become the norm from industries ranging from healthcare to grocery shopping.

Mobility Equates to Convenience for Courts and Citizens Alike

Enabling citizens to make payments via mPOS terminals is a win-win for both courts and payees. The convenience of mobility offers the following benefits to courts and citizens alike:

  • Reduces overhead costs
  • Makes it convenient and easy to make payments
  • Increases productivity and simplifies the process of those taking payments
  • Eliminates the time delay of payment processing

How mPOS Increases Value

mPOS technology is quickly and continually evolving. As such, current mPOS terminals provide additional value to judiciary systems and the citizens they serve. These developments are making it even easier for citizens to make payments wherever and whenever it’s convenient, saving time and effort for courts. The reality is, it’s become critical for all service providers (including the courts) to keep a pulse on technology. Although there are—and always will be—other payment options available, mPOS has proven to be the preferred payment option for everything from hamburgers to doctor’s visits. As such, courts need to ensure their technology can interface with citizens’ mobile payment preferences. As this technology becomes more available to cash paying citizens, courts should be focused on making mPOS a viable form of payment before the market opens—not after. Early adoption and staying ahead of the curve ensures public trust and positive opinion and eases the processing burden on courts.

Omni-Channel Payments are the Optimal Option

The rapid widespread adoption of mPOS highlights the importance of omnichannel payments. With nCourt, you can offer citizens’ multiple payment options, including online, phone, or at the counter in your offices. Our innovative payment solutions offer citizens the ability to pay for traffic citations, parking tickets, restitution, court fines and fees, probation, and more using a major credit or debit card and with no processing costs to you. In fact, citizens can pay using any mobile device, including smartphones and tablets. Simply request your free payment processing demo and we will be happy to provide an overview!
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Why Every Court Needs EMV Card Readers

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Citizens have been known to pay court fines with stolen credit cards. Don’t believe it? The Michigan Department of Corrections recently charged a 25-year-old man with fraud after he attempted to pay his probation restitution with a stolen card. The incident serves as a reminder that courts and government agencies are not exempt from credit card fraud. The good news is that fraud has been declining due to EMV (Europay, Mastercard®, and Visa®) chip cards and point-of-sale (POS) card readers. EMV enabled payment devices offer the courts a viable solution to help prevent credit card fraud within card-present environments.

What Is EMV?

The EMV standard has been available internationally for some time and was adopted in the United States in 2015. This global standard employs microchip technology for authentication embedded on the card, rather than traditional swipe cards with magnetic strip authentication.

What Are the Benefits of EMV?

When hackers are able to steal magnetic strip data, it can be used over and over for fraudulent purposes. In contrast, EMV makes use of point-to-point encryption (P2PE). The chips on EMV cards create a new and unique code for each transaction at the POS, which is used for that specific transaction only. If a hacker breaches the POS and steals the data, it will be useless. As research director Julie Conroy of financial industry research company Aite Group explains, “These new and improved cards are being deployed to improve payment security, making it more difficult for fraudsters to successfully counterfeit cards. It’s an important step forward.”

How Do EMV Card Readers Help Courts?

The widespread adoption of EMV cards in the United States means that more people will become familiar with and look for EMV card readers when making payments. According to Visa’s December 2016 chip card update, last year saw a 92% increase in Visa chip cards compared with the previous year. Courts that offer EMV card readers provide a secure and simple on-premises payment method that enables citizens to pay quickly and conveniently. And EMV card readers provide security for both the payer and payee—Visa reports a 52% decrease in counterfeit fraud at chip-enabled merchants in September 2016 alone (compared with September 2015).

Securely Collect Court Fines On-Premises

At nCourt, we are continually working to make payment processing easier and more secure for you and the paying citizens you serve. This evolution includes offering Payment Card Industry (PCI)-compliant EMV devices that use point-to-point encryption to enable quick and secure countertop payment on-premises.

Please contact nCourt for an initial consultation and evaluation of your current payment process. We’re here to help!
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Access to Justice: The Future of Court Payment Processing

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As a result of the national attention gained by Ferguson, Missouri, a nationwide forum is beginning to take shape. This forum, called “Justice for All,” explores how to provide access to justice for those who cannot pay fines as a result of hardship, social inequities, or lack of payment options available to them as citizens. This first part in our series explores how to look beyond payment as a transaction and focus on how payment options can be enhanced to meet the best interest of both the court and its citizens.

What Policies are Recommended to Improve Access to Justice?

The “Justice for All” forum stresses that fines and fees are meant to be a deterrent, not a catastrophic financial burden. As such, the forum provides suggestions and policies for courts to adopt in an effort to help mitigate judicial and financial risk. Examples of policies that support access to justice include:

  • Enabling the judge’s discretion to set reasonable penalties
  • Basing a defendant’s payment options and plans on their ability to pay
  • Offering alternatives to paying fines, such as community service or participating in treatment programs
  • Promoting the defendant’s voluntary appearance in court by sending reminders via phone and text to avoid the issuance of failure to appear (FTA)
  • Using the suspension of driver’s licenses as a last resort rather than a first step, as doing so often has a negative impact on a defendant’s ability to pay
  • Establishing non-jail enforcement alternatives to avoid the costs and associated implications of jail time
  • Handling special needs (ADA) offenses appropriately in addition to addressing potential mental health issues

Evaluating the Relationship Between Courts and Citizens

Many courts and government agencies have begun evaluating their relationship with citizens by examining the payment process within the judicial ecosystem. Opening multiple payment channels provides an opportunity for courts and government agencies to better and more effectively serve citizens as well as extend service offerings beyond the transaction itself. This approach has long-term rewards, ranging from increased operational efficiency to minimized occurrences of late payments and case closures.

Each judicial system will have to determine which services and payment options best fit their processes, serve their citizens, and reduce the court’s burden. For instance, by offering recurring payment plans, citizens can make timely automated payments for restitution, which enables citizens who do not have the financial means to pay the full compensation as a single one-time payment. In addition, if courts provide only on-premise payments, it can put a burden on citizens that live in rural areas, potentially causing loss of payments and delay in case closures.

As courts and government agencies make these choices, they will need help tracking community service and other non-financial items (e.g., tracking consequential payments that are not monetary in value, such as community service). And if the government is not funding new legislative mandates, courts will be left carrying the financial burden, which could have a negative impact on revenue for the courts. To aid courts, a reputable payment service provider can act as a trusted advisor to the court and its administrators, helping them reshape their approach to payment acceptance, by implementing long-term solutions that drive positive results for the judicial systems and its citizens.

How nCourt is Shaping a New Perspective on Payments

Every court grapples with decisions around implementing the best payment processing services and case management system (CMS) to support its ever-changing operations. Even courts with access to sophisticated technologies can quickly become entangled with a complex application process. Helping courts streamline their payment process and move towards greater access to justice is a relatively new concept with many payment providers for judicial systems; however, it’s not new to nCourt.

Limited public access to justice, fragmented court processes, reduced financial resources, delayed notification between key personnel in the judicial and enforcement divisions, coupled with roadblocks to obtaining affordable cutting edge technology, are typical challenges for courts, especially if they lack integration between their payment and CMS solutions. Most important, without a solid interface linking these core platforms, courts may unknowingly increase greater risk exposure, that can be damaging and reduce the public’s trust in the judiciary.

nCourt believes that the future of payment processing looks beyond the payment transaction, and how government agencies can improve service to citizens, rather than merely collecting payments. Therefore, one of the best ways to enhance services to citizens is to provide payment options conveniently accessible inside and outside of the courthouse.

With the growing technological advancement in judicial and governmental practices, nCourt has helped thousands of courts alleviate the pressure of falling behind in adopting innovative payment solutions and services. We partner with the courts, to deliver well-designed, easy and secure integration methods, and together we provide timely information and payment options to all citizens.

Please contact nCourt for an initial consultation and evaluation of your current payment processing program. We’re here to help!
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