Fergie's Tech Blog

IRS Awards Tax Payment Contract to RBS Worldpay

Brian Krebs writes on Security Fix:

The Internal Revenue Service has awarded a contract to process tax return payments for the coming filing season to RBS Worldpay, a company that recently disclosed that a hacker break-in jeopardized financial data on 1.5 million payroll card holders and at least 1.1 million Social Security numbers.

The contract award comes a month after credit card giant Visa said RBS was no longer in compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standards, a set of guidelines designed to protect cardholder data.

RBS spokesman Josh Passman said the company expects to be re-certified as PCI compliant "within the next few weeks."

The contract awarded to RBS is a what's known as a "zero dollar" contract, meaning the government doesn't award a specific dollar amount. Rather, the approved vendor takes a convenience fee for each transaction it processes. According to a copy of the contract listed at fedbizopps.gov, RBS's base convenience fee will be 1.95 percent of the amount the taxpayer owes the federal government.

posted by Fergie @ 4/23/2009 10:51:00 AM