Personal Finance

Pay OTTAWA property tax and water bills with credit card for points

  • Last Updated:
  • Jun 11th, 2015 10:53 pm
Member
User avatar
Apr 2, 2015
232 posts
93 upvotes
Ottawa, ON

Pay OTTAWA property tax and water bills with credit card for points

After going through threads here and setting up credit card bill payment with utilities for points and using the famous Canadian Tire Mastercard bill payment thread for the rest, we noted City of Ottawa was missing in the equation until looking around.

YES there are fees to use a credit card and YES payment processor is Paymentus. Stop here if that's an issue or the math does not work for your points or bonus situation. Those from Ottawa on the churn for a large spend to a bonus read on happily.


* Set up a Service Ottawa account if you haven't already to get your dog registration tags or book ice for pickup hockey or whatever :)

https://myservice.ottawa.ca/profile/register

* In the MyService navigation frame you will notice new items for Property Taxes and Water/Sewer

* Register for Property Tax payments online, have your roll number handy from last bill or assessment

* Register for Water / Sewer payments online, have your account number for enrollment

* Pay following prompts in MyService or here are direct links:

Taxes: http://ottawa.ca/en/serviceottawa/pay-y ... yment-card
Water: https://ipn.paymentus.com/otp/stde/cott/watersewer

Simple, however YMMV on fees vs. points depending on your card and spend.

Enjoy Ottawans, and others can maybe pitch Paymentus and the Ottawa By-law 2013-191 to your town as an idea if bill payment is really lacking... we're doing that for our cottage township this year at the open house town hall.
9 replies
Deal Guru
User avatar
Jun 28, 2003
12183 posts
5651 upvotes
Ottawa
Just found out about this last night. Look good but 1.99% fee got me thinking. If it works for you, by all means!
Banned
May 12, 2004
9756 posts
4136 upvotes
Ottawa
Swapping 4 quarters for a loonie. No thanks.
Deal Addict
Feb 2, 2011
1617 posts
270 upvotes
Ottawa
I rushed in here thinking damnit I just paid my taxes and I missed out. After seeing there are fees involved... I'm relieved lol.
Deal Addict
Jul 11, 2008
1791 posts
184 upvotes
Ottawa
in which situation would this be beneficial? I have a 2% no fee cash back card, so I'd be making 0.01% each time... anyone have a better scenario?
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Nov 23, 2005
9005 posts
5728 upvotes
pace wrote: in which situation would this be beneficial? I have a 2% no fee cash back card, so I'd be making 0.01% each time... anyone have a better scenario?
Pretty much. Why anyone would jump through such hoops to get that kinda return is beyond me.
Deal Addict
Dec 26, 2009
3155 posts
1869 upvotes
boyoflondon wrote: Pretty much. Why anyone would jump through such hoops to get that kinda return is beyond me.
True, but could be useful if you :
- need to get to a certain annual spending threshold on your card
- want to top up your cash-back or points to redeem
- have tight cashflow, or
- have something to do with a ~50-day free loan (even at 2% interest rate savings account, this is effectively an extra 0.27% before tax)

Like the OP said, usefulness of this is dependent on each individual's situation.

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