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Water Department may nix in-house credit card payment
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McMinnville Water Department could be shutting off one method of payment to eliminate a $10,000 annual cost to the city.According to Water Department director Anthony Pelham, their in-house machine that allows people to pay with a credit or debit card needs to be replaced.Pelham asked city Water and Sewer Committee members if they would like to remove that payment option and save $10,000 in transaction fees the city pays for its customers to use that service.“The biggest issue with that method is that we eat the credit card fees,” Pelham said. “That number equates to, in the ballpark, of $10,000 per year. From the credit card transactions, we pay the credit card company for handling those transactions from the water and sewer revenue.”Also offered by the department is an online bill payment option where the customer can go onto the internet and pay their bill using a credit or debit card and, said Pelham, that transaction fee is paid by the customer.“We have a company that we already contract with to provide our online bill pay,” Pelham said.