What is it?

Visa Europe has been the driving force behind the UK Government Procurement Card (Visa) since 1997, enabling public sector organisations to improve their efficiency and control their spending.

Since then, Visa has achieved £185 million of monetary savings. Last year alone, 6.6 million transactions were made using Visa.

Visa is supported and endorsed from the highest levels of Government, right through to the departments and teams who work every day to serve our communities.

From Whitehall to parish councils, Visa is making an impact and helping Government to do business more efficiently.

Visa is approved by the National Audit Office for use by UK public sector organisations to purchase goods and services.

The new payment card solutions and associated services framework went live with OGCbuying.solutions in February 2010.

The new Visa 3 framework agreement now offers framework suppliers in three categories. As well as payment cards, there is a category for prepaid cards and another for services and products to support an organisation’s card programme.

The latter includes web-based data integration solutions, expense management and associated services including VAT recovery and data mining services.

The Visa scheme was set up to help public sector buyers move away from time-consuming and bureaucratic purchasing processes.

It provides a fast, simple and secure method to buy goods and services, and delivers many efficiency benefits including:

• Prompt payment of suppliers, typically within four days
• Substantial back-office processing efficiencies
• Faster and easier delivery of goods and services
• Better frontline services
• Complete control of card usage
• Clear and detailed audit trail for all purchases
• Electronic transaction data uploads for accounting and reconciliation
• Timely and accessible management information