GSA selects purchasing card providers for new program
Four p-card vendors awarded deals
By Susan Avery -- Purchasing, 6/15/2007 4:31:00 PM
The U.S. General Services Administration has selected four purchasing card providers for its new GSA SmartPay 2 service contracts: Citibank of Sioux Falls, S.D.; GE Capital Financial Inc. of Salt Lake City, Utah; JPMorgan Chase of New York, N.Y. and U.S. Bancorp of Minneapolis, Minn.
Valued at an estimated $26 billion each year for 10 years, the contracts continue government-wide purchase, travel, fleet and integrated charge card services currently provided by GSA's SmartPay program. GSA SmartPay is the largest government charge-card program in the world.
GSA is the centralized procurement and property management agency for the federal government, managing more than 25% of the government's total procurement dollars, and influencing management of $500 billion in federal assets, including 8,600 government-owned or leased buildings and 205,000 vehicles.
GSA SmartPay 2 builds on SmartPay by expanding product and service lines. These include prepaid cards as well as cards in foreign currencies and other separately priced, value-added items. SmartPay 2 also is expected to help federal agencies by providing enhanced agency spend analyses, program control and oversight and improved payment services through new technologies. It will help to increase security requirements for data management and handling, and complies with all Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and Payment Card Industry security standards. GSA already is assisting customers at 350 government agencies with their efforts to ensure a smooth transition to SmartPay(R)2.
"We are pleased to be one of the few issuers selected to participate," says Robert T. Abele, president of U.S. Bank Corporate Payment Systems, the division in charge of payment programs. "This will be the beginning of our third decade providing payment solutions to government. We are committed to excelling in this market."
U.S. Bank will offer travel, purchasing, fleet, and integrated payment products, as well as technologies such as its Access Online program management tool and PowerTrack, an electronic invoice payment and presentment tool used by the Department of Defense and other government agencies.
U.S. Bank has served federal agencies since the inception of the purchase card program in 1986. It was the only provider of pcards during the International Merchant Purchase Authorization Card (I.M.P.A.C.) program from 1988 to 1998, and is one of several providers participating in the first GSA SmartPay program, which ends in 2008.
After that date, each government agency will consider proposals from the four selected issuers, choosing the issuer that best meets their needs. The exact date of the kick-off conference has not been scheduled, although it is expected to be sometime in July.
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