Updating SmartPay on GSA radar

What: GSA has issued an RFI for the next generation of its SmartPay program, seeking best practices from the commercial sector.

Why: SmartPay provides charge card and payment solutions to more than 350 federal agencies, and has about 2165,000 active purchase cards government-wide. The program uses traditional plastic charge cards, as well as virtual and single-use accounts for its interactions.

For SmartPay 3, GSA is exploring how it can improve the program to keep up with commercial best practices and the future of the payment industry. GSA is looking for recommendations through an RFI for solutions to reduce fraud, waste and abuse, improve security of payment tools, and maximize data, according to a GSA release.

"This program has great potential to expand and improve with new innovative features and solutions delivered from the private sector," Federal Acquisition Services Commissioner Tom Sharpe said. "FAS is looking forward to adding even more value to the payment products and services we offer our government agency customers by working with our industry partners to evolve this program to an even higher level of performance and support."

The current GSA SmartPay 2 contracts expire in about four years, and GSA is planning a competition in fiscal 2016 for the future SmartPay program.

Responses are due by Jan. 22, 2015. For more, click here.