GSA Blog

Both GSA SmartPay 2 and the upcoming GSA SmartPay 3 government-wide charge card and related payment services contracts have been named “Best-in-Class” (BIC).

Best-in-Class is a contracting and acquisition designation used across government to denote contracts that meet rigorous category management performance criteria as defined by Office of Management and Budget guidance. The best-in-class designation recognizes these contracts as ‘good-for-government’ purchasing solutions which should be used by all agencies.

GSA SmartPay is the world’s largest commercial payment solution, providing charge cards and related payment services to more than 350 federal agencies and organizations for more than 18 years. Managed by the Center for Charge Card Management, GSA SmartPay has been relied upon more than 1.6 billion times since 1998, enabling approximately $487 billion worth of transactions in support of customer agency mission delivery worldwide.  In fiscal year 2015, GSA SmartPay processed about 90 million purchase, travel, and fleet transactions with an approximate value of $28 billion.

But GSA SmartPay isn’t just payments: Every time GSA SmartPay is used, whether it’s a travel card, fleet card, or purchase card, the customer organizations earns a refund. In fiscal year 2015, more than $282 million in refunds were generated and more than $3 billion in total refunds have been generated since program inception in 1998.  The program has been the overwhelming choice of customer agencies for card services for 18 years and counting.  

GSA SmartPay 2 and GSA SmartPay 3 are the first Professional Services category contracts to earn BIC designations. The BIC evaluation process was conducted with broad cross-governmental representation including a mix of category management and subject-matter experts.  The classification gives acquisition experts across government the confidence in the GSA SmartPay contracting vehicle’s benefits.  The contract, in turn, helps the government in its efforts to optimize and manage spend.

Some key characteristics of the GSA SmartPay contract:

• Substantial consideration of small business.  GSA SmartPay allows customers to access solutions enabling more than $4 billion in small business spend annually.  
• Pricing.  The GSA SmartPay master contracts allow flexibility for potentially higher customer agency task order refunds based on volume and speed of payment. The contract also allows for smaller customers to “pool” or “tag” to readily access the program at low administrative cost.
• Includes transactional data and performance information.  GSA SmartPay includes tools to help customers achieve the data needs, data quality, program metrics, analytics they need for OMB compliance.

The BIC evaluation process was conducted with broad cross-governmental representation, with a mix of both leadership team and subject-matter experts. The GSA SmartPay program is managed by the Center for Charge Card Management.

Learn more about GSA SmartPay.