Pittsburgh March 23, 2001 B2B e-commerce consultant Innovate E-Commerce recently announced that it has implemented an enterprise-wide electronic payment gateway for the state government of North Carolina. Innovate's VIRTUAL-PAY Electronic Payment Gateway, renamed "Common Payment Service," (CPS) by the state, supports credit-card and debit-card transactions between the state, its citizens and its business partners. CPS will be employed statewide by state agencies as part of North Carolina's enterprise-based e-government initiatives that are designed to improve information and services to citizens through shared technology architectures among government agencies.
The first application of the Common Payment Service is the Department of Transportation's (DOT) Department of Motor Vehicle's (DMV) vehicle registration renewal process. Citizens can now renew their vehicle registrations on-line, over the Internet, 24/7, from anywhere at anytime. Customers using the service are also able to pay for renewal services online, in real-time, using their credit or debit cards, thanks to Innovate's electronic payment gateway technology. The system provides authorization, reversal, void, capture, settlement and return of transactions.
"The CPS system has reliably handled 300,000 transactions since going into production in September," said Don Waugh, North Carolina's assistant state controller. "We've experienced no downtime despite a 200 percent higher load than expected. This system is key to our citizens' ability to enter the virtual halls of government from their homes and businesses, and take care of their government-related transactions with unprecedented speed, accuracy and convenience."
The state plans to use the Common Payment Service for at least 15 other applications, including a lobbyist registration system, tuition and registration systems for state-affiliated colleges and universities, a vessel registration renewal system and a permit issuance system for the Department of Agriculture. Because CPS will be shared as the payment middleware across statewide agencies, the state will be able to negotiate significantly discounted credit-card processing rates based on aggregate volume, projected to be 1.1 million in the first year.
