IRS lets a contract to RBS Worldpay

According to the report of the Washington Post, the Internal Revenue Service let a contract to RBS Worldpay to process tax return payments for the coming filing season. RBS Worldpay, based in Atlanta, is the U.S. payment-processing division of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group, the fifth biggest banking group in the world. The contract award comes a month after credit card giant Visa said RBS was no longer in compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standards, a set of guidelines designed to protect cardholder data. RBS spokesman Josh Passman said the company expects to be re-certified as PCI compliant "within the next few weeks." The contract awarded to RBS is a "zero dollar" contract, that means that the government doesn't award a specific dollar amount. Instead of this, the approved vendor takes a convenience fee for each transaction it processes. According to the contract, RBS's base convenience fee will be 1.95 percent of the amount the taxpayer owes the federal government. IRS spokesman Anthony Burke said RBS will not be allowed to process credit card payments for taxpayers owing money to US until Jan. 20, 2010. Before that date RBS will have to show that it is once again PCI compliant, and it also should pass the IRS's own payment security audit.