Streamlined support: bringing government payments into the digital era
From emergency support payments during the coronavirus pandemic through to ongoing help with the cost-of-living crisis, it has never been clearer how important government support schemes are to their citizens.
These crises also revealed how agile and responsive governments’ welfare and payments systems need to be. Economic, health and geopolitical challenges emerge rapidly and often require payments to be made at a speed that many traditional benefit systems can’t cope with.
As a result, many local and national governments have begun to innovate on how they pay – and are paid by – their citizens. A modern digital payment scheme introduced in Los Angeles was able to provide COVID-19 support payments within three weeks – and the Angeleno Card has now provided $36m in support payments to over 100,000 Angelenos.
Such agile welfare systems will be key to the future of service delivery – and such innovative approaches can be applied to payments from citizens to government too. This webinar in association with knowledge partner Mastercard looked at how they can be built.
Join this webinar to find out:
- How modern digital disbursement and collection systems can be developed by government – and how they can be combined with existing benefits and payment methods.
- The advantages for government in creating more modern systems.
- How modern benefits systems can be used to respond quickly to emerging crisis around the world.
Panel
Alexander Bunch, Payments Product Owner, Cloud & Digital Services Division, Digital Directorate, Scottish Government
Alex is Product Manager for the Scottish Government’s Payments Service, which aims to be the go-to option for seamlessly making payments in the public sector in Scotland. The Service is now in Beta and has been submitting weekly payment runs on behalf of an SG-backed NDPB, ILF Scotland.
Alex’s main focus is to ensure that the Payments Service delivers value fast – in his day job this means balancing between supplier teams (2-3 scrum teams dependent on peaks) vs. managing internal stakeholder expectations, which are less aligned to the pace of technical delivery.
Alex started his career in the private sector in France as a consultant for IBM, but was also CEO of a food imports company before taking responsibilities as Head of Finance and HR in a banking and insurance sector market intelligence company. Since he moved to Scotland in 2014, he has worked exclusively in the public sector.
Hakan Kaplan, Istanbul Super-App Project Coordinator, Turkey
Hakan Kaplan has over 25 years of management experience in Telecom, Banking and Technology companies.
He worked as Head of Marketing in the first multi-branded loyalty program of Turkey, Advantage Card.
He worked as VP in Yapi Kredi Bank in charge of Payment Systems and Retail Banking between 2000 and 2010. He was a Board Member and Chairman of BKM Interbank Card Center, Chief Marketing Officer of AVEA (Turk Telekom Mobile GSM Operator), and Founding CEO of Dogus Group’s DMS (Dogus Marketing Services) company, launching the highly successful ZUBIZU coalition loyalty program with over 4 million subscribers.
Since 2020, Hakan runs his own consulting firm and engages in projects in the domains of marketing, strategy, brand management, payment systems, digital transformation, coalition loyalty and technology. He is heading the digital transformation and Super-App project of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Istanbul Super-App reached over 1,5 million users within its first year.
Tyrone Spratt, Chief Business Technology Officer, Agriculture, Board of Animal Health and Labor and Labor Industry, State of Minnesota, United States
Tyrone Spratt, Chief Business Technology Officer partnering with Minnesota departments of Agriculture, Labor and Industry and the Board of Animal Health. Tyrone leads a team of 35 technologists driving modernization through application and infrastructure digital transformation.
A member of Minnesota IT Services senior management team, Tyrone is a twenty-year state employee with 15-years of executive-level IT management and delivery experience. Tyrone holds a MBA from Metropolitan State University and lives in Anoka, Minnesota with his wife and two teenaged boys.
Anand Menon, Vice President and Global Head of Government solutions, Mastercard
Anand Menon is Vice President and Global Head of Government solutions at Mastercard. In his role, he supports governments in their goal to create efficiencies, improve transparency, while advancing social progress. Mastercard solutions support the delivery of more efficient public programs to support financial inclusion, drive the adoption of digital citizen services, accelerate the shift to a cash less economy, foster an inclusive society and drive economic progress.
Previously, Anand spent much of his career focused on financial inclusion, leading efforts at Mastercard, Accion, Bankable Frontier Associates and through numerous Microfinance Institutions in South Asia.
Anand also teaches a graduate program at NYU on “Creating business models at the intersection of profit and purpose”.
Webinar chair: Richard Johnstone, Executive Editor, Global Government Forum
Richard Johnstone is the executive editor of Global Government Forum, where he helps to produce editorial analysis and insight for the title’s audience of public servants around the world. Before joining GGF, he spent nearly five years at UK-based title Civil Service World, latterly as acting editor, and has worked in public policy journalism throughout his career.
