In August 2016, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and Michigan State Disbursement Unit launched their partnership with PayNearMe – an electronic cash transaction network.
Since August, parents have been able to make payments to Michigan child support using cash by visiting Family Dollar and 7-Eleven stores. The total number of locations nationwide is 17,000 and 550 of them are located in Michigan.
Now as the partnership is extended, parents have an ability to use 150 local CVS pharmacy locations in Michigan and 8,000 stores nationwide to pay cash to Michigan child support.
With one of the largest pharmacy chains in the partnership, children and their families have more benefits, since paying for it is even more convenient than it was before.
Director of the Office of Child Support within MDHHS, Erin Frisch, said that children were receiving the support they needed and deserved more quickly as the result of more convenient payment options at stores they were shopping at.
She also added that the expansion of the services to the CVS pharmacy chain was exciting, because it created more opportunities for payment that would benefit children and their families.
MiSDU collaboration with other entities
To help children and their families better, MDHSS works not only with PayNearMe but also with other local agencies, health and human services entities, courts, and various Michigan and federal agencies.
For payment processing, collecting and distributing support payments, MDHHS Office of Child Support collaborates with the Michigan State Disbursement Unit (MiSDU) – the state’s centralized payment processing center.
Employers make most of the payments made to MiSDU on behalf of their employees. However, a significant number of parents pay support separately, on their own.
Along with online payment, there are several payment methods available to customers for their convenience: money order, check, credit card, mail or phone.
A lot of customers prefer to pay by money orders or cash. Unfortunately, these methods also mean more challenges that make payments less convenient as customers have to find the nearest participating location, find some spare time and go there.
With the new service and CVS as the participant, customers are now able to pay for their child support with cash in the nearest CVS pharmacy store or make a payment online.
Payment process
More than 5,200 transactions at PayNearMe’s network for the store had been completed and brought more than $1.3 million in support to children and their families.
In order to find the nearest payment locations, parents can visit www.paynearme/paymybill. When the location is found, customers need to follow several steps in the case that they wish to make a payment.
The process of payment is simple:
- Visit www.misdu.com website and select “Cash Payment” option
- Enter requested data on PayNearMe website
- Select if the payment code should be texted to a cell phone or printed out
- Choose the nearest payment location from the list
- Visit the store and provide a cashier with the code and cash
PayNearMe payments can take up to three business days to post, just like in most other electronic payment systems. Also, customer needs to pay a $1.99 convenience fee.
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