Governments have been focused on digitalizing their services for citizens and business for the past decade. Digital government services simplify interactions with the public sector, freeing up people and companies from dealing with the government and allowing them to focus on other priorities. They help to increase trust in the public sector, foster a more inclusive society, and boost prosperity.

Digital payments are a key enabler for government digital services, as they bridge the gap between digital access to services and final user consumption. By providing a streamlined, intuitive end-to-end process for users, digital payments from citizens and businesses to the government eliminate the need for face-to-face interactions and time-consuming paper-based workflows.

Digital payments not only have the power to reduce operational costs by lowering the costs of cash and streamlining processes but can also boost revenue collection by providing more convenient payment options—enabling governments to improve reconciliation, payment forecasting, and treasury management. Digital payments play an important role in enhancing inclusion across society—making government services more accessible to all people.

Advanced digital governments provide a single point of entry to all government services for citizens and businesses. They commonly prioritize respecting the time of their citizens by asking for relevant data “once only”, protecting the security of citizens’ data, and using it only with consent. They focus on meeting users’ needs in a responsive and proactive way, while enabling collaboration and data sharing across government entities. And importantly, they offer digital payments with emphasis on the right choice for users, a secure authentication process, a frictionless (one-click) payment, and convenience through digital credentials for recurring services.

Open government data and open finance are the next frontier for digital governments. They can empower the public sector to tailor its services more effectively to the needs of specific users, tackle fraud, and enhance collection of tax revenue and other debt obligations to the government.

Convenient, user-friendly, end-to-end digital government services can help win and maintain the trust of citizens and businesses—enhancing their confidence that the public sector is there to serve them. To deliver the full benefits, digitalization of government services and payments needs to be backed by well-defined strategies with clear goals, strong public–private sector partnerships, and long-term vision and commitment from governments themselves.

This study has been commissioned and developed in collaboration between Kearney and Visa, a global payments organization.