A new entrant in the tax-payment business is playing the price card to compete against two established companies.
RBS WorldPay Inc. announced the Tuesday its payUSAtax service, in partnership with Value Payment Systems LLC of Nashville, to process personal and business tax payments to the federal government using credit and debit cards.
James H. Scarborough, RBS WorldPay's vice president of market development, said the Royal Bank of Scotland unit planned to use the Value Payment partnership to pursue additional markets, including state and local taxes.
"We see IRS payments as a launching pad to go after government payments as a whole," Scarborough said in an interview.
Value Payment Systems already provides card processing for tax payments in Alabama, Kansas and New York, and Royal Bank of Scotland also has a government-payment portfolio, primarily in the Northeast, through its Citizens Financial Group Inc. unit.
RBS WorldPay said the payUSAtax service would charge 1.95% to process a credit card payment and a fixed "convenience fee" of $3.89 for debit transactions.
The federal government is barred by law from paying processing fees for card payments.
By comparison, the Link2Gov Corp. unit of Fidelity National Information Services Inc., charges a 2.35% fee, and the Official Payments Corp. unit of Tier Technologies Inc., charges 2.39%, according to the Treasury Department
J. Scott Slusser, Value Payment's chief marketing officer, said the partners submitted a successful bid to the Internal Revenue Service, through a request for proposals that began in 2008.
"The lower fee was a way to get in," Slusser said. "There are price points all across the board."
RBS WorldPay said the payUSAtax service would accept MasterCard Inc. and Discover Financial Services credit and debit cards and would process debit transactions over the networks operated by Visa Inc., First Data Corp.'s Star unit, Discover's Pulse unit or Fidelity National's NYCE.
