Using GOV.UK Pay

GOV.UK Pay is a free service, available to public sector organisations to take online card payments. There’s no monthly charge, no set-up fee and no procurement process. It enables service teams to replace offline payment methods quickly and easily, providing a Payment Card Industry (PCI) fully compliant, secure and accessible user experience hosted on GOV.UK.

It takes a couple of minutes to create an account and you can take payments within a day using our payment link functionality but many services opt for a richer experience and integrate with our well-documented API.

With GOV.UK Pay you can:

  • take debit card, credit card and digital wallets payments via our API integration or payment links functionality take recurring payments for ongoing services that automatically renew, for example licensing
  • provide assisted digital methods by taking debit and credit card payments by telephone, or post with MOTO payment functionality
  • give full or partial refunds
  • report on payments manually with CSV downloads or automatically via our API
  • apply custom branding on your payment pages

Who can use GOV.UK Pay

Most public sector organisations can use Pay, for example:

  • central government departments
  • local authorities
  • armed forces
  • NHS, including NHS trusts
  • emergency services

However, public sector organisations are not allowed to use GOV.UK Pay for commercial ‘intended for profit’ purposes. If your organisation is an 'enterprise' as described in the Subsidy Control Act 2022 you will not be able to use GOV.UK Pay.

What GOV.UK Pay offers

Payment Service Provider

You need a Payment Service Provider (PSP) to process payments through GOV.UK Pay. We’ve already procured Stripe as our payment provider for you if you work for a local authority, police force or a government-owned charitable group.

Alternatively, if you are a central government or health sector organisation, you can use Government Banking’s centralised contract currently held with Worldpay.

When these contracts and/or suppliers change we will handle the technical integration and make the switch as seamless as possible for public sector users.

Refunds

Provide full or partial refunds to your users for free

Security

3D Secure 2 is available on all payments taken on GOV.UK Pay.

Reporting

Download transaction reports about all your payments on GOV.UK Pay.

Custom branding

Customise your payment pages with your own logos and branding.

Send emails to users

GOV.UK Pay can automatically send emails to your users. For example, to confirm:

  • payments
  • refunds

Manage your team

Control what your team members can see and do and remove them if they leave your organisation.

Standards and support

GOV.UK Pay has been tested against all relevant government accessibility and usability standards. It’s also:

  • PCI compliant
  • supported 24/7 by the team at the Government Digital Service
  • offered with extensive developer documentation

How to use GOV.UK Pay

Use GOV.UK Pay to:

  • instantly set up a payment page on GOV.UK
  • integrate with our API and generate customised payment pages for your service

Use GOV.UK Pay if you currently collect payment on paper or by email.

Integrating with our API may be better if you have an online service and, for example, you need to delay payments or issue a lot of refunds.