Digital payments and local finance: this is how the pagoPA platform generates up to 469 million euros for Italian municipalities

Carried out by a multidisciplinary research group promoted by the Next Generation EU Mission Unit and the General Inspectorate for Public Administration Finance (IGEPA) of the State General Accounting Office together with PagoPA, the analysis highlights an improvement in collection rates and a marked reduction in territorial gaps. In this interview, Riccardo Fusari, Head of the Strategic Coordination & Data Area within the Data Strategy & Program Governance Department led by the Chief Data Officer Michelangelo Quaglia, delves into the evidence that emerged from the joint workoutlining the evolution of public services between PNRR resources, accounting automation and synergies with the IO App and SEND digital notifications.

From the study “Effects of the adoption of pagoPA services on the collection capacity of Municipalities” it emerges that pagoPA has brought between 243 and 469 million euros of additional revenue into the coffers of Italian Municipalities. How can these very important numbers be explained and why does the digitalisation of payments transform into concrete resources for local budgets?

The management of payment processes and collection systems is one of the fundamental pillars for the administration of every public body; to digitize it, we cannot limit ourselves to simple technological integration, but it is also necessary to rethink various “downstream” processes that depend on payment, such as reconciliation and reporting, in a digital logic. The econometric study we conducted with the State General Accounting Office (through the Next Generation EU Mission Unit and the General Inspectorate for Public Administration Finance – IGEPA) isolates the causal impact of the pagoPA payments platform from general macroeconomic trends. The prudential estimate of between 243 and 469 million euros of increased collections in the four-year period 2021-2024 demonstrates that the technological transition is not only sustainable for Municipalities, but unlocks real resources that they would not previously have collected without pagoPA, converting them into liquidity to finance services to citizens.

Riccardo Fusari, Head of the Strategic Coordination & Data Area pagoPA

The most significant increases in collections concern TARI, road fines and school canteens. What are the factors that make these services so responsive to the digital channel compared to other municipal revenues?

The differentiated reactivity that emerged from the study (+3.3 pp for canteens and kindergartens, +2.4 pp for road fines, +0.9 pp for TARI) depends on the frequency of the transaction and the nature of the service. TARI and road fines represent the cornerstones of local budgets (TARI alone represents over 31% of municipal tax assessments, road fines over 17% of non-tax revenues). On individually requested services such as canteens, where payment is recurring and directly linked to an essential service for the family, the drastic reduction in friction and the clarity of the amount stimulate immediate spontaneous compliance.

The analysis shows a clear improvement in the collection capacity on revenues with a high frequency of direct interaction, such as TARI, fines and school services. To what extent has the reduction of friction in payments (multi-channel, immediate transparency of the debt, integration with App IO) changed citizens’ propensity for spontaneous compliance, transforming digitalisation from a mere regulatory obligation to a perceived benefit in terms of time and ease of use?

If on the one hand pagoPA has kept traditional channels active without imposing the adoption of digital tools by citizens, on the other hand it has contributed to introducing all the main innovations in the world of payments and fintech within the public sector, prioritizing ease of use and raising the level of satisfaction in the user experience. The impact is measured above all in the recovery of territorial delays: between 2020 and 2024 we recorded an increase in digital payments in the Municipalities of Southern Italy and the Islands of 12 percentage points, with a simultaneous reduction in cash which has realigned the South to the national average levels. When the amount due is transparent and easily payable, payment stops being a bureaucratic obstacle and becomes an integral aspect of the service perceived as useful.

The data shows that almost 80% of municipalities have adhered to the PNRR warnings, reaching an average of 39 active services per entity. How did these resources speed up a process that would otherwise have taken much longer?

The PNRR has given a structural acceleration to the entire public ecosystem. For measure 1.4.3 managed by the Department for Digital Transformation of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the resources (equal to approximately 135 million euros paid directly to the Municipalities via notices) were anchored to the achievement of certified technological targets. This has led over 77% of Italian Municipalities (6,123 entities) to finance the integration of their systems with the pagoPA platform, exceeding the objective of 35 active services per Municipality and reaching an average of over 39 integrated services. The resulting picture is a legacy not just of software, but of true organizational maturity and project management capabilities on a widespread scale.

Experts underline how the platform allows municipalities to know in real time who paid what. How much does this automation have on operating costs, staff working time and the reduction of manual errors?

The automation guaranteed by pagoPA has a profound impact on the daily life of the local administrative machine, intervening on one of the historically most onerous phases: the reconciliation and accounting classification of flows. The unique association between the transaction and the debt position fundamentally eliminates the need to manually cross-reference bank statements and registers, reducing the risk of human error and the onset of disputes with citizens. Naturally, this is a transformation process that is still ongoing. As long as traditional and non-integrated collection channels persist (such as direct bank transfers with generic reasons), manual work will remain inevitable for tax offices. Precisely for this reason, the progressive convergence of the entire perimeter of municipal revenues towards pagoPA represents the key to 100% expressing the efficiency potential of the platform, allowing Municipalities to reallocate precious human resources on activities with greater added value.

Is the adoption of pagoPA helping to reduce the historical differences in collection between large centers and smaller or territorially disadvantaged entities, or does performance still depend on the starting context?

This is one of the most significant and encouraging outcomes that emerged from our econometric analysis: the Digital Public Infrastructures (DPI) centralized at state level act as real factors of equalization and compensation for local fragilities. By relieving smaller administrations of the financial and technical burdens associated with the development of proprietary portals, the national infrastructure guarantees a homogeneous technological baseline across the entire territory. The data on the collection of services on individual demand – such as canteens and nurseries – demonstrate this in a tangible way. Stratifying the sample based on the initial collection capacity of 2019, the Municipalities that started from the most fragile conditions (first quartile, Q1) recorded an extraordinary leap of +10.2 percentage points in the collection rate, compared to a more limited increase (+2.8 pp) for the historically advanced entities (Q4). Shared technological innovation does not amplify distances, but brings the same opportunities to everyone, offering smaller or less structured municipalities the leverage to recover efficiency in an accelerated way.

With over 450 million transactions and 46 million users by the end of 2025, pagoPA now intermediates a huge share of municipal revenue. What does it mean to manage this critical mass of data to guide future public policies?

Cross-referencing over 64 million transactions for a value of 11.6 billion euros in the municipal sector alone means managing an information resource of strategic importance for the entire country. It is a responsibility that we face by placing the protection of confidentiality first: the data belong to citizens and every analysis respects the most stringent privacy, anonymization and advanced aggregation protocols. At the same time, the scientific collaboration initiated with the State General Accounting Office demonstrates the effectiveness of an evidence-driven approach (data-driven policy making). We are working to integrate our data within public and interoperable Data Spaces to monitor in real time the health of local finance and evaluate the concrete effectiveness of reforms in the area, ensuring greater transparency and public services designed on the real needs of communities.

The study calls for synergy with other tools such as SEND digital notifications and the IO App. What is the next step to make administrative management even simpler, more integrated and transparent for citizens?

The next fundamental step consists in making a cultural leap in quality: moving from the “technical adhesion” phase of the tools to a truly synergistic and strategic design of the digital ecosystem. If the push of the PNRR was decisive in grounding individual infrastructures, today’s challenge is to make them communicate as a single supply chain at the service of the citizen. The most virtuous experiences already present in the area demonstrate that maximum efficiency is achieved by eliminating any procedural discontinuity: the document with legal value is delivered with certainty and at reduced costs via the SEND Digital Notification Service, the proactive reminder is displayed on IO, the public services app, and the balance is completed in a few seconds on the pagoPA payments platform. In the coming months we will extend our econometric models precisely to quantify the economic value generated by this integration. Making these operational schemes systematic on a national scale means reducing collection times for Municipalities and, above all, giving citizens an increasingly simple, effective and transparent relationship with the Public Administration.