Penny Wise, Process Foolish: Reno's Credit Card Fee Folly

What will the City of Reno do next to get their hands on additional cash.

As the Reno Gazette Journal reported the City of Reno voted on Wednesday, April 9, 2025 to shift the credit card processing fees back to the citizens of Reno. The taxpayers get to absorb yet another fee due to poor city fiscal management.

In a display of municipal mathematics, the City of Reno has brilliantly introduced passing on to residents the processing fee for credit card payments, apparently without calculating that this might prompt citizens to... write more checks.

What’s next at city hall, pay toilets?

Yes, the same city government that struggles with potholes has now stumbled into financial quicksand. Rather than absorbing the small processing cost, they've incentivized residents to switch to the most labor-intensive payment method available, ensuring city employees will now spend countless hours manually processing paper checks. If the city is going to pass on the credit card fees we bet most people who still have paper checks will switch back to the old fashion way.

Let’s all remember manual processes are prone to errors, requiring additional time for corrections and follow-up. While the per-check cost may seem low, the overall cost of processing a large volume of checks, including labor and other associated expenses, can be higher than credit card processing, especially when considering the time invested by employees in manual tasks. 

The bean counters apparently failed to count the actual beans. While patting themselves on the back for this "revenue enhancement," they overlooked the obvious: paying staff to process mountains of paper checks will cost far more than the credit card processing fee. It's like installing a toll booth that costs more to operate than the tolls it collects. Or hey, we could pretend it is Sparks and say toll road, you know Mayor Ed Lawson’s brainchild.

Perhaps next week, Reno will introduce a brilliant new "digital convenience fee" for email, prompting citizens to communicate exclusively via carrier pigeon.