County’s online ticket payment system eases burden

The Cobb County (Ga.) State Court Clerk’s Office has begun offering residents the opportunity to pay traffic tickets online. As a result, the clerk’s office spends less time opening mail, answering phone calls and handling in-person payments, and residents spend less time paying their tickets.

Every year, Cobb County issues an average of 60,000 moving-violation citations that are payable at the county State Court Clerk’s Office without a court appearance. State Court Clerk Diane Graham sought a cost-effective way to ease the burden placed on her staff and to ease the ticket-payment process for residents.

Setting up an online ticket payment application was a clear solution, but it was not without its challenges. By necessity, the clerk’s office has a complex accounting system that distributes funds to multiple bank accounts. Any application developed for the county needed to be able to distribute those funds appropriately, and, at the same time, keep credit card and convenience fees separate from citation payments.

The application needed to ensure the security of all payments from the beginning of the transactions through final deposit into county accounts. It also had to guarantee that no entity could automatically withdraw funds from county accounts, meaning that rejected payments and other automatically withdrawn fees would have to come from a specially designated account.

Cobb County selected Atlanta-based EzGov to deliver its online ticket payment application. The application gives the county the ability to separate online transactions into multiple accounts and maintain its existing accounting processes. Citation payments remain independent from credit card and convenience fees, and the application prohibits banks and credit card companies from withdrawing funds from the ticket payment account.

Now, a single user can pay multiple citations at once, and payments can be deposited into the county’s moving-violations account, general account or both. The system also ensures user privacy and security, and the company’s real-time credit card processing and payment-confirmation system lets residents know immediately whether their payments have been accepted.

Cobb County launched the application in August 2000, becoming the first county in Georgia to offer online payment of moving-violation citations. In the first full month after the application was launched, 17 percent of tickets were paid online. Just one month later, more than 20 percent of tickets were paid online. “Receiving a ticket may not always be the most pleasant experience, but at least we can make it easier for someone to pay it,” Graham says.

For more information visit the Cobb County Web site at www.cobbstatecourtclerk.com.