Your SEWA bill: how to check it and pay it

How to check your SEWA bill

• Quick Pay, no login. The Check Bill and Bill Inquiry links on SEWA's home page both open SEWA's Quick Pay page, which starts by asking for your account number (SEWA, home page; SEWA, Make Payment).
• Your online account. SEWA's customer portal has an Account Login, and new users can register (SEWA, home page).
• By phone. SEWA's number for enquiries is 600 566 665 (SEWA, Contact Us).

How to pay your SEWA bill

SEWA's Quick Pay page takes three steps and starts with your SEWA account number. SEWA says it accepts payment by bank account, Mastercard, Visa, Discover, American Express, ATM card or debit card, and asks you to double-check the details you enter (SEWA, Make Payment).

The UAE government portal lists these other ways to pay SEWA: UAE banks approved by SEWA, Emirates Post offices, SEWA customer service offices, e-pay on SEWA's website, the SEWA app for Android and iPhone, Etisalat payment machines across Sharjah, and exchange houses across the UAE (u.ae, Public utilities). SEWA's home page links to its app on the App Store (SEWA, home page).

SEWA lists its payment locations, all customer service centres and offices, in Sharjah, Kalba, Khor Fakkan and Al Batayih (SEWA, Payment Locations). The Halwan Customer Service Center, next to Sharjah Cooperative Society, is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for enquiries, payments and reconnection (SEWA, Contact Us).

What's on a SEWA bill

SEWA (the Sharjah Electricity, Water and Gas Authority) supplies electricity, water and gas in the emirate of Sharjah (u.ae, Public utilities). SEWA's energy calculator splits a bill into electricity, water, a surcharge on each, and 5% VAT (SEWA, Energy Calculator).

SEWA tariff

SEWA's energy calculator, with its default category "Residential (Local/Expat)" selected, shows these rates (SEWA, Energy Calculator):

Surcharge: 6.0 fils per kWh of electricity and 0.5 fils per gallon of water. The calculator then adds VAT at 5%.

Why your SEWA bill went up

• More use moves you into a dearer slab. SEWA's rates rise at 2,000, 4,000 and 6,000 kWh of electricity a month, and at 6,000 and 12,000 gallons of water (SEWA, Energy Calculator).
• The surcharge is per unit, so it grows with every kWh and gallon you use (SEWA, Energy Calculator).

To estimate a bill from your own readings, enter them in SEWA's energy calculator (SEWA, Energy Calculator).

Get a reminder before your SEWA bill is due

Rasid is an app that keeps household bills and subscriptions in one place. For SEWA it can:

• Track the bill. Add SEWA by hand from Rasid's list of UAE providers, or connect Gmail with read-only access. Rasid then looks for the bills SEWA emails you and reads the amount and, when the email shows it, the due date.
• Remind you before it's due. For a bill with a due date, Rasid sends a reminder three days before, at 10:00.
• Show what changed. Once Rasid has more than one SEWA bill, the bill's screen shows recent bills side by side, the average, and how much more or less this bill is than the last.
• Send you to SEWA to pay. If the payment link in a SEWA email can be confirmed as SEWA's own, the bill shows a Pay button that opens SEWA's page. You can also mark the bill as paid.

Rasid does not pay bills. You pay SEWA directly, through SEWA's own channels. Rasid's Gmail access is read-only, so it cannot send, delete or change your email.