Why Care & Public Sector Payments Need Resilience

Local authorities and NHS organisations are currently struggling to issue payments to care providers, leaving as many as 116,000 people without access to the funds they rely on for essential care.

Since Friday 18 July, multiple UK councils have reported a complete outage at EML (Prepaid Financial Services), affecting prepaid card payments for carers, personal assistants and service recipients. This has triggered public concern, delayed essential payments, and exposed a lack of operational resilience across many Direct Payment programmes.

The nationwide outage has blocked councils from disbursing funds to service users, carers, and care providers. And those in need of care have been forced to pay out of pocket — or go without entirely.

These failures have left service providers unpaid, families unsupported, and councils under pressure to explain why a single vendor was responsible for all critical payments.

The urgency for care workers and families

The current outage highlights how vulnerable the care sector can be when key infrastructure relies on a single point of failure.

More than 120 local authorities and government bodies currently use EML for issuing Direct Payments. For many, there is no fallback or contingency in place if their sole vendor fails.

Because care workers pay for services in real time, they need access to funds — immediately. Many operate on thin margins, and without regular payments, they risk walking away from the sector altogether, further compounding staffing pressures in an already strained system.

In Care, reimbursement delays aren’t just inconvenient; they’re destabilising.

Unlike commercial payments, a delay in funds here doesn’t just affect balance sheets, it affects the families, unpaid carers, personal assistants, and third-party providers ability to access the care they’re legally entitled to. This could include therapies, home care, transport, or personal assistance.

Resilience in this space isn’t just about keeping the lights on. It’s about building payment systems with enough agility, visibility, and control to survive disruption.

How Soldo provides a resilient alternative

Local authorities and care providers rely on Soldo to keep services running and vulnerable people protected.

Soldo is a Crown Commercial Service approved supplier under the Payment Solutions 2 Framework (RM6248), offering public sector teams a secure, compliant and fast-to-deploy payment solution. Councils can use us alongside existing vendors or as a full alternative.

Stewarts Care and Making Space are two Care Organisations with complex needs that are already using Soldo to cut cash use and time spent on admin and reconciliation.

Our platform gives local authorities and care providers the flexibility to act quickly, the transparency to maintain trust, and the control to protect every pound — and every person — in the system.

You can use Soldo to:

• Allocate budgets to carers, families or service recipients with full traceability
• Be audit-ready with reporting and reconciliation standards
• Freeze cards, restrict merchants, set spend limits and alerts in real time
• Get real-time support with Helpdesk visibility, team access controls, and simplified user experience

We’re public sector-ready, fast to deploy, and designed for resilience.

For Care Groups, that means uninterrupted support, even in times of disruption. And in an industry where trust and timing matter, that’s non-negotiable.