Roanoke Accepts eChecks

Andrew Kantor reports for the Roanoke Times on that city's recent launch of eCheck acceptance.

The program lets people pay bills without using a credit card, benefiting both users and the city. That's because American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa charge Official Payments (the company that handles the city's credit-card processing) for each transaction. This cost is passed on to customers in the form of a "convenience fee" of 2.75 percent of their bill.

Accepting payments by check means the city doesn't have to charge those fees, but retains the speed of an all-electronic payment. "I don't have a person back here opening up the envelopes and sorting them out," Powers said. "It's already there. We submit it, we hit it, we get the money."