Paying Bills in Chile

When a person lives in Chile for a long period, he has to find a convenient way to pay the bills--especially since Chileans do not send checks through the mail due to concerns over mail theft. The normal Spanish word for "to pay" is pagar but Chileans cancel their bills and thus use the verb cancelar. They do understand, however, either verb. There are three main methods of paying bills in Chile.

1. You might work in a place that has "juniors" (i.e., men, sometimes illiterate, who run errands and stand in lines for minimum wage). If so, there will be a place at the office where you will be able to bring your bills (with checks attached) to work. The office workers will sort out phone, gas, electric, cell phone, etc. into groups as employees bring them to the office. When the number of bills with checks received from all employees reaches a certain number, the junior will go stand in line and pay the bills for everyone. 

2. You can pay your bills online through your Chilean checking account. To do so, you might have to ask your bank to set you up a plan to effectuate payments online (sometimes called a "multipass") which allows you to pay your bills automatically out of your checking account. You can get this plan for free at your branch usually, or you can make an online request and they will send it to your home or apartment for a fee of about $5.25. After you have a multipass you can set up online and automatic payments by logging into your checking account.

3. You can do what most Chileans do and go to either (a) a branch office of the company that issued the bill or (b) go to an independent payment center. Either way, you will have to wait in line. And if you choose option (a) you will have to go to every company that issued you a bill (i.e., you will spend a lot of time paying bills). Juniors do option (a) and busy executives or professionals use juniors because it is a more efficient system. Option (b) is not so bad if you happen to be near one of the independent payment centers located in hypermarket Lider or supermarket Santa Isabel, or inside Jumbo. You can pay your bills before or after you do your shopping. These centers are often independent businesses. The two major ones are Servipag (which has many locations, many of which are often found in hypermarket Jumbo) and Sencillito, which also has a lot of locations. There is usually no extra charge to use these private bill paying centers. But be sure to check the hours of operations. Many of them do not work much on the weekend.

Note: Unfortunately, the weekend is the time when most people have to go shopping, and that means long supermarket and payment center lines. If you choose to pay via option (3), try to shop and pay one morning. Doing so is very convenient if one has a wife or maid to do this sort of thing for you.