Tyler Technologies, which provides software and payments services mainly to state and municipal governments, is gearing up for payments modernization moves by its clients next year.
For this year, the Plano, Texas-based company projects as much as $2.36 billion in annual revenue, according to its website. The company has been building its business since 1966, and now has about 7,600 employees, and clients in about 15,000 locations. Among its biggest customers is the County of Los Angeles, and on the smaller side is Loving County, Texas.
Morgan Jines, the company’s vice president of payments, described in an interview last week what trends Tyler expects next year in its work with government clients. While Tyler does minimal work for the federal government, Jines noted the ripple effect of President Donald Trump’s March payments modernization executive order banishing paper checks and the impact it’s having on state and local governments.
Aside from payments modernization trends, she foresees more client work on security systems to mitigate fraud; more focus on embedded payments that tap real-time payments; and more use of payments orchestration to reduce costs.
Editor’s note: The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
PAYMENTS DIVE: How has your company responded to the president's payments modernization order?
MORGAN JINES: We do have some down-market government entities that relied exclusively on either checks or ACH. We have a very turnkey response, with them already being in the cloud, to turn on other payment channels, whether that be digital wallets, whether that be buy now, pay later.
It primarily affected lower-market towns and villages and some smaller cities. I would say most populations with a threshold above 75,000, no issue. They still offered ACH and checks, but they had a full system of paying, whether through card or digital wallets or even buy now, pay later. And so for them, the impact was they noticed a shift in the adoption of cards. They noticed an impact, if they were absorbing those fees.
In what other ways has that federal government modernization tone affected your business?
In the past 12 to 18 months I have seen more [requests for proposals] around payment modernization and system modernization than I’ve ever seen.
What other benefits does payments modernization have?
These RFPs focused on modernizing our systems are ensuring not just industry adherence, but also future, go-forward plans to prevent and mitigate fraud for systems that are able to evolve with the industry.
How are you helping your clients handle the higher payments costs?
We’ve deployed things such as payment orchestration. And we’re doing things such as least-cost debit routing. We are applying for Visa utility rates for certain card types across utility billing clients, looking at those [merchant category] codes. So, we’re trying to strategically ensure a big part of our strategy is going to market with what makes sense for government. How can we minimize their cost for processing.
What other big themes do you expect for 2026?
There has been enough awareness and push, and probably demand from residents, that I do believe embedded finance options – such as buy now, pay later – they’re going to become increasingly required for B2B and software organizations. Tying into this is those real-time payments. What value are we adding as a software organization where we're providing faster settlement? That faster settlement is just improving cash flow, so, holistically, that impacts both the residents, and certainly the government agencies.
