GOV.UK Pay turns ten, with almost £10 billion processed for 600 public bodies

GOV.UK Pay, the payments platform built by the Government Digital Service (GDS), is ten years old. It has handled nearly £10 billion in transactions across almost 1,800 services for more than 600 organisations, GDS wrote, from central and local government to the NHS, police, some educational institutions and the armed forces.

Before it existed, each public body had to set up its own payment service, a costly and repetitive job. Millions of people now use GOV.UK Pay for everything from a new passport to garden waste collection.

Starting with prisons

The first service to use it was the Ministry of Justice's "Send money to someone in prison". Previously senders used bank transfers and had to get a reference exactly right; mistakes meant refunds the ministry had no way to notify people about. Before that, money went by postal order or in cash.

"Knowing that money will be delivered securely and quickly has been the biggest benefit to prisoners and their families," the service team said. "The integration was very easy. Once the payment provider contract was in place, everything just worked!"

At first the platform only offered an API, so a technical team was needed to connect it. It later added options for organisations without developers.

The case for platforms

GOV.UK Pay is one of the clearest examples of government as a platform: build a common component once, to a high standard, and let hundreds of organisations reuse it. Each council that uses it avoids a procurement, a security review and a contract of its own. The savings are rarely visible in a single budget, which is why such platforms need central funding to survive; ten years of steady use is the evidence that they pay off.