Pay Your Mesa Bills With Card? There's A New Fee In March

By Mariana Dale
Published: Wednesday, February 14, 2018 - 5:05am

Mesa residents who pay their city bills with a credit or debit card will pay a new fee starting March 12.

“You want the people that are actually using those credit cards and incurring those costs to actually pay for the cost of using the credit card, not the entire customer base,” Mesa spokesman Steven Wright said.

The city is implementing a 2.37 percent fee, which will pay for the card’s processing.

The average Mesa resident pays about $150 in utility bills a month, which would amount to a $3.50 additional fee, according to a presentation to City Council last year.

The city of Mesa will not itself collect any revenue from the fee. It will apply to services such as utilities and building permits.

The nearby cities of Tempe and Chandler do not collect a credit card service fee and absorb the cost of processing credit cards into their budget. City staff cited “convenience” fees charged by SRP ( $1.90),  Southwest Gas ($2.00)  and APS ($2.95) as examples.

Mesa estimates it will save $1.2 million dollars just on utility payments.

“That’s a lot of money that actually stays in the city budget for other critical city services,” Wright said.

Customers who don’t want to pay the fee can opt to pay their bills with a their checking or savings account, check, cash and money orders.

In 2017, about 23 percent of people paid their utility bill with a card and the number of people was increasing year over year.