Fee-free credit card transactions using the PayPal mobile app

By Ian Brizdle | July 5, 2022

We’re all used to the convenience and benefit of paying our bills with a credit card and at least getting some travel miles or cash back bonuses. As a Hawaiian Electric customer, one complaint I’ve had is that I couldn’t pay my electric bill with a credit card without incurring a “convenience” fee. As a Hawaiian Electric employee who works to improve user experience with our various customer touchpoints, I’m excited to share a new fee-free option.

No service fee for credit card bill payments?

You heard it right. We finally have a way to pay our bill with a credit card, get those points for miles or cash back, and not have to pay a convenience fee. Our new payment processor, Paymentus, currently has an agreement with PayPal: If you pay your bill using the PayPal mobile app, the normal Paymentus convenience fee ($1.99 per transaction for residential accounts) will be waived.

What’s the catch?

The only catch is the payment must be made using the PayPal mobile app — not the webpage. My take on this is that they are waiving the transaction fee through the mobile app to boost their app download numbers. This also has the feeling of an introductory or limited time offer, and that it may not be a permanent thing once they achieve enough downloads. This is one of the reasons why we as a company are not shouting this from every hilltop — the offer is likely to change at some point.

However, while the offer is on the table, there isn’t any cost to you except for the time required to download the free mobile app on your phone and the time to set up a free PayPal account if you don’t have one already. I didn’t have a PayPal account (I prefer Venmo), and it only took me a few minutes to sign up for a new account and verify my phone number and email address.

Here are the steps:

1. Download the PayPal mobile app on your smart phone from the Android or Apple store

2. Log into the app or create a new account

3. Once authenticated, load your desired credit card into your PayPal wallet

4. Navigate to the Payments page ($), and select the Bills tab

5. Type “Hawaiian Electric” into the “Search for a company to pay” field at the top of the Bills screen

6. Select “Hawaiian Electric — Bill Payment” and enter your account number and zip code

This will bring up the interface to make a one-time payment on your electric bill using the credit card in your PayPal wallet, with no service fee incurred.

It’s great that there’s another fee-free option for customers!

Ian Brizdle is a manager of web and digital communications at Hawaiian Electric Company.