the foobar zone

I'm a firm believer that it being 2007, it should be possible - nay, easy - to pay bills on-line using a credit card. So it's a little surprising to come across systems which don't yet accept credit cards on-line.

The latest bill which popped through the letterbox at home was my telly license renewal, and appears to fall into this no-credit-cards-please category. An Post, the state-owned post company, currently holds the contract to collect TV licence fees in Ireland. An Post also run an on-line bill paying system called BillPay.ie, so it would seem natural that they require any on-line transactions to go through this system. Eat your own dog food and all that.

However, on registering for BillPay.ie, it became clear pretty quickly that they only accept direct debit mandates and laser cards. What? No credit cards?

Apparently not. I emailed their customer support to ask why, and got the following in reply:

Unfortunately it is not possible to pay bills on the site using a visa card.
We apologise that this payment method is not currently available.
It is based on requests by the utilities that this service not be made available.
If you wish you can contact the utility and request its availability
You can pay for your TV Licence by credit card over the phone on 1890 228 528 between 10-1 and 2-4

I replied:

This seems strange. Can I ask which utility or utilities in particular asked that credit cards not be available for this service? I would like to talk to them to find out why.

To which:

All utility companies don't wish to make this service available.
We charge these utility companies for being on Billpay.ie and for the use of credit cards online.
The utility companies don't wish to pay us to make this service
available to its customers.
You will need to contact the individual utility companies you deal with.

Uh-huh. Now I could understand if a single company or utility was unhappy with credit card payments, on the basis that they accrue merchant commission. But for 93 payee accounts to decline credit cards as a means of paying almost certainly means that there is a serious problem with BillPay.ie's business proposition for credit card payments.

Collecting money on small accounts is a troublesome and expensive business, and companies are not going to write off a widely available means for no reason, particularly if it means that they get paid sooner and more reliably. Credit card commission fees for merchants typically range between 0.5% and 2%, depending on a variety of factors, several of which BillPay.ie would easily be able to militate against. Most companies would consider this to be quite an acceptable cost. So it would seem likely that either BillPay.ie's commission for credit card payments far exceeds this or else that their T&C's are ludicrous. For 93 payee accounts to reject credit cards outright, they would want to be.

To add injury to amazement, BillPay.ie spammed me with some random advertising junk, even though I explicitly opted out of all junk email blitzes during registration. And to add insult to injury, I had no way of logging into my BillPay.ie account to stop this stuff until my PIN number came through the letterbox.

I've since paid my licence fee by phone on a 1890 number. It's slower, more tedious, more error prone and less secure, and costs me a phone call. Oh, and their phone answering computer appears to work outside the hours of 10-1 and 2-4 too. They mustn't be in the union, then - the bastards!