Over the last few months, you may have noticed that we have shared on social media and our website that billing is going to be moving to an outsourced credit card processing system. Mr. Downs also spoke about this upcoming change in his President’s Report at the Annual Meeting in April. Currently DVEC absorbs the fees charged to the cooperative for membership use of credit and debit cards to pay bills. That number has been growing at a fast pace over the last couple of years. The Board of Directors has deemed a change necessary. We are currently working with our card processor to move to an online bill pay platform that will allow members to see their bills and history online with an option to pay your bill conveniently from your phone or home computer. As of the writing of this article, the projected go live date for that website launch will be sometime in August 2024.

With this exciting move, however, credit and debit card convenience fees will be billed by the credit card processing company. Because of our small size, being the smallest electric and natural gas cooperative in the state of Arizona, and one of the smaller across the country, DVEC does not have many options. We have chosen to remain with our current billing processor and their card processing vendor to move forward.

The card processor has calculated and thus determined the convenience fee and payment cap based on our membership size, the size of our average billing amounts, the number of members usually paying with a credit or debit card, and so on. The Convenience Fee will be $6.75 per card transaction. The transactions will also be capped at $250.

Much like purchasing diesel at the gas station, when you’ve reached the $75 cap on your card you must run your card again. If your DVEC bill is $315 for example, and you choose to pay online with a credit or debit card, your bill will need to be paid in two increments. The first transaction will be $250, with a $6.75 convenience fee. The second will be the remaining balance of $65.00 with another $6.75 convenience fee. We realize this is cause for concern for many of our card paying members, but remember, payments made by cash, check and Easy Pay Bank Draft payments will continue to be fee FREE with no cap on payment amounts. Contact the DVEC office to learn how to sign up for Easy Pay Bank Draft.

Please let us know if you have any other questions on this change in services coming from Duncan Valley Electric Cooperative as we continue to look for options to meet the needs of our membership in the most fiscally responsible way possible.