Maine stores scramble for CashPoint alternative

AUGUSTA – The owners of more than 100 Maine businesses are looking for alternatives since they stopped accepting bill payments from customers because the company that transmitted the funds has filed for bankruptcy.

Keith McCray’s Mailing Center Inc. expects to be able to begin accepting payments for utility and phone bills again in June, when his new contract with American Payment Systems takes effect. The new contract will allow McCray to accept payments for even more companies, including department stores and credit-card vendors, he said.

McCray said he receives a small fee for every transaction. But he says some customers who visit his store intending just to pay a bill end up buying something while they’re there.

He used CashPoint for about five months and customers had gotten used to paying their bills at his stores, in Augusta next to The Painted Horse and at Cook’s Corner in Brunswick.

“They’re in shock. Half of them didn’t know about CashPoint,” McCray said.

Central Maine Power Co. spokesman John Carroll said the utility is preparing information to send to customers on where they can pay bills in the future.

“We are working to establish relationships with new agents,” Carroll said.

Officials at Maine’s Office of Consumer Credit Regulation say the full effect of the CashPoint bankruptcy filing has yet to be felt. Some payments made at the 123 businesses that used the CashPoint service were transmitted directly to creditors. Others took longer to be processed and may not have been credited, said Will Lund, the office’s director.

Consumers will find out if their payments were not transmitted when they get their current month’s bills, he said. CashPoint had a surety bond of $100,000 that would cover consumers if their payments did not make it to creditors.

“We have contacted all the potential creditors that we knew about,” Lund said. “If consumers receive late notices as a result of payments they made to CashPoint, we will try to work with creditors to resolve it.”