The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) rolled out the ability to make field office payments via credit cards at three more locations, Anita Gore, DMV’s deputy director of communications, told Techwire. The agency will host many more events in coming weeks and months that are exclusively dedicated to signing Californians up for the federally mandated Real ID card. Among the takeaways:
• Field offices in Fresno, Roseville and Victorville now offer residents the ability to pay for transactions with major credit cards — bringing the number of field offices now offering that option to four. The functionality went live in Roseville on Oct. 28, and in Fresno and Victorville on Oct. 30. DMV first let customers pay with credit cards on Sept. 30 at its Davis field office, an achievement Gov. Gavin Newsom has prioritized since taking office in January. DMV plans to make the ability to pay with credit cards available at field offices throughout the state in early 2020. It accepts Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover cards, and debit cards with the Visa or MasterCard logo at the field office.
• DMV deemed its inaugural Real ID sign-up event at the Eureka field office on Nov. 2 a success after finding more than 100 people waiting when doors opened at 9 a.m. In five hours, staffers signed up more than 250 people for the ID card — required after Oct. 1, 2020, for California residents who want to fly domestically and enter some federal facilities without having to carry their passports.
The event’s concept — opening a field office on a Saturday, to handle only Real ID needs on a day when it otherwise would have been closed — will be repeated and expanded. DMV will open field offices in King City, Madera, Manteca and Pomona for Real ID transactions on Dec. 7; and in Santa Ana on Dec. 14 — with all five staying open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on those days.
• DMV continues to offer limited-time, Real ID-only pop-up offices, after serving 78 people in one day during its pop-up field office pilot at Health Net offices in Rancho Cordova. The agency has conducted six pop-ups so far and handled around 2,500 Real ID transactions. It has four more pop-ups scheduled this year and will do another 14 between January and April 2020, Gore said.
• These strategies and others, including offering informational tables, posters and electronic messages in airports around the state, are paying off. The agency has delivered more than 200,000 Real IDs in about a month, Gore said, swelling its total number of deliveries to more than 6.3 million. At the inaugural DMV Vendor Day Oct. 17, Chief Deputy Director Kathleen Webb said the agency had provided around 6.08 million Real IDs since January 2018.
“We’re doing what we can to make it easier for people to get a Real ID and to encourage people to come in now as opposed to waiting, procrastinating until the end,” Gore said. DMV also continues to improve access to registration and other transactions. It will deploy 200 DMV Now kiosks this year, including 188 in retail locations or at field offices. That will nearly double the total number of kiosks, to 353.
• After discussing the agency’s goals and challenges before more than 200 people at DMV Vendor Day, the agency invited nine vendors to its Vendor Pitch Day on Tuesday, Gore said. DMV had published a website where vendors could submit concepts or solutions, and given them a submission deadline of Nov. 1. The ideas are now being evaluated.
