Conduent, PayPal Bring Mobile Payments Edge to Child Support Payments

The issue of child support payments has long been a thorny and difficult one. Between the legion of tales of deadbeat dads skipping out altogether to the lesser legion of dads required to pay child support bills that equal more than their monthly take-home pay, there’s trouble all up and down that particular pike. Conduent Incorporated recently tipped us off about a new connection between itself and PayPal that should manage to smooth at least some of this rocky ground.

Conduent represents, the report noted, “the only multistate child support payment portal of its kind.” That makes it a pretty powerful tool in terms of connecting divorced families, and with Conduent’s ExpertPay platform, it gets that much easier. The new addition allows for users to make payments to all 50 states using their PayPal accounts, so the tool that makes eBay so spectacularly easy to use—at least, for as long as eBay is willing to take it—brings that same level of ease of use to child support.

Conduent’s ExpertPay also complies with all known state-level remittance requirements, so even if some need to make payments to multiple states at once, the easy-to-use PayPal platform makes that formerly tortuous path a breeze.

Mark Brewer, Conduent’s president for global public sector solutions, noted “As a market leader in child support, we’re teaming up with PayPal to offer businesses and citizens more convenient and secure options. This collaboration also supports the mission of our state government clients, which must ensure child support payments are delivered to the families and children who need them.”

Given that Conduent currently processes about $1 for every $3 of child support payments out there, it’s clearly in its element. Taking something that was likely difficult for more than a few out there and streamlining the process to the point where it’s a PayPal payment away from completion is likely to drive more than a few users into its camp. It’s not going to fix every problem—there are still those basic “blood-from-a-turnip” issues involved as well as the outright uncaring—but it should drive some new users and give Conduent an even bigger slice of the market.

Conduent had a great idea here, and turning to PayPal to make Conduent’s already extensive presence even more so was a smart move.