How SMI and Galileo Help Millions of Families Access Child Support Payments

For more than 50 years, Systems & Methods Inc. (SMI) has made it easier for families to access critical government-administered payments that improve the quality of their daily lives. SMI provides custom child support disbursement solutions for dozens of U.S. state and local agencies that collectively serve millions of families, processing more than 76 million payments annually, with a 99.99 percent accuracy rate, according to the company. 

A cornerstone of SMI’s offering is its smiONE Visa prepaid card, which enables child support recipients to receive payments directly into a prepaid account and then spend those funds wherever Visa is accepted, whether online or at physical locations.

Galileo recently spoke with Bill Stone, CEO at SMI, about how SMI and Galileo are making it easier to receive and spend crucial support funds.

Mission: “Our mission is going the extra mile with a passion to serve,” said Stone. “We love serving families–especially those who are unbanked or underbanked–receiving child support payments. Our customers are typically unbanked or underbanked individuals who receive child support payments. Our solution provides them with a stored value card, making it more efficient for them to access their funds compared to traditional checks.”

Founding: SMI was founded in 1971 in Carrollton, Georgia, originally providing accounting services, batch processing and data entry for local businesses. The company began supporting the issuance of food stamp benefit payments for the State of Georgia in 1981 and since has grown its benefit payments business to 16 states. 

What Galileo Does for Them: Galileo provides payment authorization and processing technology for the smiONE Visa prepaid card, issued by The Bancorp Bank, which offers features including free direct deposit, a mobile app and 24/7 live agent support. 

“The partnership with Galileo started around 2008-2009,” said Stone.

Stone went on to cite Galileo’s assistance in helping mitigate risk stemming from SMI’s fraud and dispute resolution responsibilities as the program manager for the smiONE card. 

The Road Ahead: “We’re looking to improve our product by focusing on financial literacy and education,” noted Stone. “We aim to offer a product that helps build credit for our cardholders, providing them with more opportunities.”