Pre Paid Cards for Public Authority Deputyship and Corporate Appointeeship service

The Council is carrying out early market engagement to help plan a future procurement for an FSCS protected money account system with pre paid / carer card solution to support its Public Authority Deputyship and Corporate Appointeeship service. The Authority supports adults who are unable to manage their own finances.

The Council is looking to understand what solutions are available to help people access day to day discretionary money (for example shopping and activities), and, where appropriate, to withdraw small amounts of cash from an ATM. The Authority will continue to act as the legal Deputy or Appointee and will retain all decision making responsibility.

The Council requires to engage with the market for suitable suppliers to share non binding information about their services, including: • how discretionary spending and controlled ATM withdrawals are managed, with the ability to turn ATM access on or off and set limits for individual clients; • how proxy or secondary cards can be used safely to reduce the need for PIN sharing; • available spending controls, alerts and exception reporting; • audit and reporting features, including reporting on ATM withdrawals and system audit logs; • typical implementation timescales, support arrangements and service levels; • how client funds are held and protected (for example safeguarded Mastercard products and/or FSCS protected bank accounts); and • transparent pricing models. This notice is for information gathering only.

It is not a call for competition and taking part will not provide any advantage in any future procurement. The expression of interest must be submitted no later than 12 Noon Friday 06 June 2026 via Proacts Portal.

The Council will not accept expression of interests via any other mechanism. Following the preliminary market engagement which may involve a suppler event, the Council will decide the route to market - an open competitive tendering process or utilising a compliant framework.

The issue of the Preliminary Market Engagement does not commit the Council to commence a procurement process. The dates and figures are indicative and will be confirmed for the tender notice