City of Covington utility customers can now pay their utility bills online. As part of the city’s effort to introduce technology into daily operations, a bill pay Web site went live Friday.

City Systems Information Manager Bobby Johnson said the new Web site has meter reading history, consumption history and transaction and deposit history.

Johnson said residents can pay online with the same credit cards the city accepts in person: Discover, MasterCard and Visa.

Residents are able to register for an online account by going to cityofcovington.com and clicking on the link under "Community Events." Johnson said any customer who registers online will still be able to pay their bills in person, by phone or through the mail.

The next utility bill that residents receive will include instruction about how to register. There is an online help menu, or customers can call the city at (770) 385-2000 and press "1" and a customer service representative will help them.

Johnson said city employees have been using the Web site for the past six weeks, in order to work out all of the kinks.

"The feedback we have received from the city employees has been very positive. Our goal was to create a Web site that not only offered as much billing information to the public as possible, but to also make the Web site as intuitive as possible," Johnson said. "It has been Mayor Kim Carter and the city council's intent for some time now to make doing business with the city of Covington as convenient as possible. The best way to do that is to offer online options to our citizens."

The only utility fee that cannot be paid online is the stormwater fee.

The billing site is actually a separate product from the rest of the city’s new Web site and is an extension of CIS’s Infinity revenue software.

The city’s new main Web site went live in June, and Johnson said that over the past few months more content has continued to be added to the site. He said this Web site is much easier to keep up-to-date.

Two more Web site options being considered are to allow businesses to pay for permits and license fees online and possibly to create a Web page to auction off retired city equipment.