How Brighton & Hove City Council is joining in the PayPal revolution
You might be used to using PayPal to pay for online goods and services. But residents in Brighton and Hove can now look forward to using the online payment provider to pay for a variety of essential services from Brighton and Hove City Council.
By using the council website, people in the area can do anything from paying their council tax to pay business rates with PayPal. So does this herald a new era for how councils handle their financial transactions from their customers?
Why PayPal and councils make a good fit
PayPal has been around for two decades now. The digital payment provider has grown from being a niche payment solution for buying goods on auction sites like eBay, to being one of the largest online payment brands in the world.
As of the first quarter of 2020, there were over 325 million active PayPal users worldwide. Regular online shoppers at fashion retailers like Asos and Urban Outfitters or tech providers like Dell and HP now enjoy the convenience and safety of this payment provider. Plus many casino gaming fans are relying on the security of playing at casinos using PayPal since it allows them to play without providing any personal information to the operators.
PayPal’s industry-standard protective technology and buyer protection helps many users pay for various things with peace of mind. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before the digital payment provider started being used for public services.
PayPal’s benefits for making council payments
Although residents in Brighton have seen council tax bills rise by 3.99% from April, the fact that the council now accepts PayPal payments means that it is at least more convenient to pay. Rather than having to ring the council telephone line and type in a long card number or go through the trouble of setting up a direct debit, Brighton and Hove residents can simply make PayPal payment instead.
By merely using the Brighton & Hove City Council website, residents will be able to click on the PayPal payment link, enter in their email address and password, and then make the payment in less than a minute. Users will also benefit from PayPal’s famously secure online payment protocols that ensure that all communication between the user’s browser and the council website will stay fully encrypted.
It should be noted that PayPal also offers several benefits for those people who want to pay for anything from council tax to business rates but don’t want to have to do so directly from their bank account. There are also provisions available for Brighton and Hove residents to use PayPal for a variety of other services such as housing rents and seaside homes, emergency accommodation rents, and even making payments for things like nursery fees and shop display licenses.
Brighton and Hove Council’s forward-thinking vision
It’s not just accepting online payments via innovative payment providers such as PayPal that have caused Brighton and Hove Council to be routinely labelled one of the UK’s more progressive councils.
The council recently unveiled a plan to make Brighton city centre car-free within the next three years. It’s a bold move to try and combat air pollution for those living and working in the city centre, and such a scheme is expected to be followed in other UK cities such as York.
By imposing such a scheme, it’s hoped that Brighton residents can avoid the adverse health effects that follow on from dangerously high levels of nitrogen dioxide. Such a plan follows on from the success of projects like the World Car Free Day that continues to promote the cause.
While actively policing such a plan will impose a strain on council resources, the fact that extra funds will be available thanks to the convenience of PayPal payments will hopefully mean that Brighton and Hove can continue its vision for 21st-century