Omaha's Journey to a Seamless and Secure SaaS Payment Solution

The Quest for Better Payment Solutions

The City of Omaha, Nebraska, lives up to their vision to provide a streamlined citizen experience. The City’s Planning Department’s Permits and Inspection Division offers their constituents an online permit experience, which includes the ability to pay for applications, permits, and inspection services. This had become an important part of the permit process, but there were also some areas the City wanted to improve upon.

The City faced challenges with their previous payment solution and sought a secure, efficient, and customer-friendly option for processing transactions. In this case study, we explore their journey from using an older adapter to adopting the Elavon connector through Velosimo to use with their land management software, Accela.

Uncovering the Drawbacks

There were several areas the City was looking to enhance for their customers. As Stu Craven, Senior Application Analyst from Omaha, NE, explains, "We wanted to provide the ability for customers to pay with ACH/eChecks and we needed to find a solution that was a better fit for our payment security requirements with PCI compliance."

Aiming for Seamless Transactions

By switching to the Elavon connector through Velosimo, Omaha quickly realized their goal of providing a more seamless integration with Accela for their customers. They added the option for customers to pay using ACH/eCheck payments while reducing the service fees the City had to pay their payment processor. By adopting this new connector, Omaha was able to unify its payment processing under a single platform, making it easier for its finance department to track metrics and generate reports. 

A Unified Payment Processing

The adoption of the new connector has unified Omaha's payment processing under a single platform, making it easier for their finance department to track metrics and generate reports: "Going with Elavon and the Velosimo connector provided a better way for finance to do metrics and reporting. We weren't siloed like we were before," adds Craven.

Choosing for Flexibility and Visibility

Omaha chose to use the Elavon integration with Velosimo for several reasons. As an established customer of Velosimo, the team was confident in the platform's usability and knew they could track transactions in the administration portal for better visibility and potential troubleshooting. They were also confident they could quickly realize the time to value with a proven implementation process.

Significant Savings and Improved Visibility

Since implementing the Elavon connector through Velosimo, Omaha has experienced several significant benefits. Stu explains, "Now that we've got very tightly integrated ACH and electronic checks, we're saving significant money on credit card fees. Many of our customers choose to pay using ACH/eCheck. That equates to immediate savings in credit card processing fees. According to Craven, “We've limited the credit card processing dollar amount, and we're already seeing big savings.". We feel like over the course of a year, it's going to really pay off for us."

And Omaha was able to quickly set up and configure the new integration with Elavon through the Velosimo platform, and within two weeks, they were in production.

Success in the Switch

Omaha's switch to the Elavon connector through Velosimo has proven successful, resulting in a more secure, efficient, and user-friendly payment solution. The City can now offer better payment options for its customers while saving money on processing fees. This case study demonstrates the importance of choosing the right payment processing platform and the potential benefits it can bring to businesses and government agencies alike.