Local Government Online Payments CAN be Simple and Inexpensive

The Old Way Is Broken

For decades, small towns and counties have been stuck with the same problem: accepting credit card payments shouldn't require hiring a consultant or signing a multi-year contract. Yet that's exactly what happens when municipalities try to let residents pay their water bills, property taxes, or court fines online.

 

The typical process looks like this: A city clerk contacts a vendor, sits through sales presentations, negotiates a contract with terms they don't fully understand, waits months for technical implementation, trains staff on completely new software systems, and then discovers they're locked in for 3-5 years whether it works well or not.

 

What If It Didn't Have To Be That Way?

 

Here's a radical idea: what if accepting payments online was as simple as uploading the spreadsheet you're already using?

That's the entire premise behind DyerPay. No contracts. No complex onboarding. No expensive consultants. Just the CSV files you already have.

 

How It Actually Works

 

Every municipality already tracks what residents owe using spreadsheets or simple software. Property tax rolls, utility billing, court fines - they're all just lists of names, account numbers, and balances.

 

With DyerPay, you upload that same file. The system reads whatever column names you're currently using - whether it's "Account_Number" or "AcctNo" or "CustomerID" - and maps them automatically. Your residents can immediately look up their balances and pay online.

 

When payments come in, you download a CSV file with the transaction details in whatever format your accounting software expects. Same column names. Same structure. No learning a new system.

 

The Real Cost Comparison

 

Traditional vendors charge municipalities in three ways:

 

Setup Fees: $2,000-15,000 for implementation and training
Monthly Fees: $200-800 per month regardless of transaction volume
Transaction Fees: 2-4% plus $0.30 per transaction

 

For a small town processing $500,000 in annual payments, that adds up to $15,000-25,000 per year in costs passed on to residents or absorbed by the municipality.

 

DyerPay charges residents directly: $2 for card payments, $1 for bank transfers. The municipality pays nothing. No setup fees. No monthly fees. No percentage of transactions. Zero.

 

Why This Matters for Small Towns

 

Large payment processors build their systems for big cities with dedicated IT departments and large transaction volumes. They can afford expensive implementations because the economics work at scale.

 

Small municipalities - towns under 50,000 population - don't have those resources. They have one clerk who's been doing things the same way for 20 years. They don't have IT staff. They can't afford $10,000 onboarding projects.

 

These small towns still need to accept online payments. Their residents expect it. But the existing solutions aren't built for them.

 

The Technology Is Already Simple

 

The reason this can be so straightforward is that the technology already exists and works reliably. Stripe handles the actual payment processing - the same infrastructure that powers millions of online businesses. The hard parts are already solved.

 

What small municipalities need isn't more technology. They need less. They need a simple interface that works with what they already have instead of forcing them to learn entirely new systems.

 

Getting Started Takes Hours, Not Months

 

Traditional vendor implementations take 3-6 months minimum. There are discovery calls, requirements gathering, custom integrations, staff training sessions, and pilot testing phases.

 

DyerPay onboarding looks like this:

 

1. Create an account and connect your bank (15 minutes)
2. Upload your existing spreadsheet of account balances (5 minutes)
3. Map your column names to the system fields (10 minutes)
4. Share the payment link with residents (immediate)

 

That's it. You can go from signing up to accepting payments in under an hour.

 

No Long-Term Commitments

 

The contracts traditional vendors require aren't just about legal protection - they're about locking in revenue even if the service doesn't work well for you.

 

DyerPay operates month-to-month. If it doesn't work for your municipality, you can stop using it tomorrow. Your data is always accessible as CSV files you can download. There's no migration project required to switch to something else.

 

This model only works if municipalities actually want to keep using the service. That forces us to keep things simple and keep costs low.

 

Built for Real Government Employees

 

The biggest barrier to technology adoption in small government isn't the technology itself - it's whether the people actually using it can figure it out without calling support every day.

 

Clerks in small towns aren't IT professionals. Many have been in the same role for decades. They're comfortable with paper systems and basic spreadsheets. Asking them to learn complex software interfaces isn't realistic.

 

DyerPay is designed for exactly this situation. The interface is simple enough that someone comfortable with email and basic spreadsheets can manage it without training. Upload a file. Download reports. That's the extent of the complexity.

 

What This Means For Your Municipality

 

If you're a small municipality currently:

 

• Requiring residents to mail checks or visit your office in person
• Paying high percentages on the few online payments you do accept
• Locked into an expensive contract with a traditional vendor
• Considering online payments but overwhelmed by the complexity

 

There's now a simpler option. One that costs your municipality nothing, works with your existing data, and can be set up this afternoon.

 

The technology for simple municipal payments already exists. You shouldn't need a six-month implementation project to use it.