Public sector service teams can now use GOV.UK Pay to take payments from Welsh language speakers.
GDS common components have been built to meet the needs of all users, including Welsh language speakers. We are committed to working with service users within the devolved administrations to meet and incorporate their requirements for Welsh language functionality and support.
We have recently done some work to make GOV.UK payment pages available in Welsh.
First government service to use GOV.UK Pay in Wales
GOV.UK Pay lets businesses and citizens pay for government services online. It is used by 138 services across the public sector. Last month, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW) started taking online payments using GOV.UK Pay payment links, which made it the first service in Wales to adopt GOV.UK Pay.
Using GOV.UK Pay in Welsh and with custom branding
Last year, GOV.UK Pay introduced payments links. These allow services to easily create pages to take online card payments and issue refunds to their users.
The HIW team got in touch with us. They wanted to move away from cash payments, but did not have a digital service or a technical team to support it. They asked if GOV.UK Pay could offer payments pages in Welsh and were keen for them to incorporate their own branding.
Custom branding on payment links is valuable for any organisation that doesn’t use GOV.UK branding (such as local authorities), and making payment links available in Welsh means that Welsh government organisations can now use them.
We built on the pre-existing feature to provide payment pages in Welsh, so now the entire payment links journey is available in Welsh. We did the same for custom branding.
Like our previous work, we internationalised these pages so we can easily add more languages in the future.
Now, HIW can use payment links in Welsh with their own branding.
Stuart Fitzgerald, Director of Strategy and Engagement and Senior Responsible Officer for the HIW Change Programme said:
The introduction of online payments to HIW is bringing huge benefits to both independent healthcare providers, who can pay registrations quickly and easily, but also to the organisation, through streamlining and automating the payment process.
GOV.UK Pay has provided a free and secure solution customisable to both organisational branding and – for the first time – for the Welsh language, enabling a smooth user journey for users in both languages.
Colleagues in the GOV.UK Pay team have been really accommodating in working with us and achieving this important part of our wider change programme.
How to use GOV.UK payments links
Teams that have a live GOV.UK Pay account can set up and use online payment links (in English or Welsh) right away. We published more detailed instructions and further information on the GOV.UK Pay features page.
Anyone with a public sector email address can set up their own test account by visiting the GOV.UK Pay product page. You need to contact the GOV.UK Pay team to be able to test the payment links feature from the test account.
Teams wanting to integrate with the GOV.UK Pay API can also use Welsh – our documentation explains how to do that. We have also recently published a technical blog post where we explain how we built this feature.
Contact the GOV.UK Pay team if you have any questions.
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