The “HE Government Payments” line on your bank or card statement is a charge run by AllPaid, a private payment processor that handles card transactions for courts, county offices, utilities, and other government agencies. Depending on how your bank truncates the descriptor, the same charge can appear as “GovPayNet,” “AllPaid,” or a variant. Someone using your card paid a government bill, and AllPaid sat between the card network and the office that received the money.
What You Probably Paid For
AllPaid contracts with local and county agencies that do not run their own card processing. The company captures the payment, keeps its fee, and forwards the rest to the receiving office. Each destination has a unique Pay Location Code that identifies the specific agency.
The most common reasons this charge shows up:
- Court obligations, including traffic tickets, criminal fines, and bail.
- Municipal utilities such as water, sewer, and sanitation.
- Permits, parking tickets, and other government fees.
Which of these actually route through AllPaid depends on your local agencies. One county might use it only for court fines while a neighboring one runs its utility billing through the same system.
Why the Total Is Higher Than You Expected
Every AllPaid transaction carries a nonrefundable service fee stacked on top of the amount owed to the agency. That combined figure is what posts to your statement, so a small difference between what you thought you paid and what you see on your account is almost always the fee.
Fees scale with the payment size and the payment method. Online payments start around $1.50 for amounts under $50 and rise in tiers. Phone-assisted payments, where a live agent takes you through the transaction, run several dollars higher for the same payment size. Individual agencies negotiate their own contracts, so the exact schedule varies by jurisdiction. The fee is disclosed before you confirm the transaction.
One thing to know up front: AllPaid keeps the service fee no matter what happens next. If the agency later refunds the base amount, the processing fee does not come back.1Adams County, PA. AllPaid General Terms of Service
Look Up the Receipt First
If you don’t remember the payment, the fastest way to identify it is a receipt search on AllPaid’s portal at govpaynow.com. You’ll want three pieces of information from your statement:
- The Pay Location Code, a short code (often four digits, sometimes alphanumeric) that identifies the receiving office. It is sometimes embedded in the merchant descriptor on your statement.
- The exact transaction amount that posted.
- The last four digits of the card used.
Enter the Pay Location Code to pull up the agency that received the funds; often that alone is enough to place the payment. If the original transaction was made online through AllPaid, you can request the confirmation to be emailed. The receipt shows the date, agency name, base amount, and service fee.
If the Lookup Doesn’t Answer the Question
Call AllPaid customer support at 1-888-604-7888, which operates 24 hours.2City of Maquoketa. AllPaid Info Sheet A representative can pull up the transaction from your card details and tell you which agency received it. What they can’t do is explain how that office applied the money to your account. Questions about a specific citation number, bail balance, or utility bill have to go to the agency itself.
Disputing an Unauthorized Charge
If no one in your household authorized the payment, the next step is a dispute with your card issuer. How that plays out depends on whether the card is a credit card or a debit card, and the difference is not trivial.
Credit Card
Credit card disputes are governed by the Fair Credit Billing Act. You have 60 days from the statement date on which the charge first appeared to send your issuer written notice of a billing error, including your name, account number, the disputed amount, and the reason it’s wrong.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1666 – Correction of Billing Errors The statute directs the notice to the billing-inquiries address the issuer designates, though most large issuers now also accept disputes online or by phone.
The issuer has to acknowledge the dispute within 30 days and resolve it within two billing cycles. While the investigation runs, it can’t try to collect the disputed amount or report it as delinquent. If the charge is confirmed as unauthorized, federal law caps your liability at $50, and most major issuers waive that as a matter of policy.4Federal Trade Commission. Fair Credit Billing Act
Debit Card
Debit cards fall under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and Regulation E, which run on a different clock. You still have 60 days from the statement date to report the error, but the resolution timeline shifts.5Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Regulation E 1005.11 – Procedures for Resolving Errors Your bank has 10 business days to investigate. It can extend that to 45 days only if it provisionally credits your account within the first 10 business days. For point-of-sale debit transactions, which is how most AllPaid payments are coded, the extended window is 90 days.
Liability is where the real difference shows. Report an unauthorized debit charge within two business days and your maximum loss is $50. Wait longer than two business days but under 60, and the ceiling rises to $500. Past 60 days, you can be liable for the full amount. A dispute you leave sitting on a debit card can cost you money that the same delay on a credit card would not.
Getting the Base Payment Refunded
If the charge is legitimate but you overpaid or the underlying obligation was already satisfied, AllPaid can’t refund you directly. Its terms of service state that it has no authority over how the receiving agency applies the payment.1Adams County, PA. AllPaid General Terms of Service The refund request has to go to the court clerk, utility department, or other office that received the funds, through that office’s own refund process.
Even when an agency approves a full refund of the base amount, the AllPaid service fee stays gone. The company treats the fee as earned the moment the transaction processes. On a large payment, that’s worth factoring in before deciding how hard to push for a refund.