I just read a stat putting half of U.S. households paying at least one bill via online banking. Which leads me to ask: how many of you are paying bills with an online bill-pay service?
I don’t know much about paying bills via the internet. At one time, I thought that you set up a bill-pay account with your bank, and then the bank did the work of collecting all the monthly bills and presenting them to you through their web portal. I’ve been told that this is not how it works. I’ve been told you have to personally set up each and every repetitive bill with the vendor, not the bank.
For the last couple of years I’ve been holding out, waiting until the vendors started offering a discount incentive for paying their bills online. Unfortunately, the exact opposite happened. Banks offer it for free and vendors now charge a fee for wanting to pay by credit card. Maybe writing out all those checks by hand and paying postage isn’t worth it anymore? Especially considering the first class rate is hiking to $0.39 on 1/1/06.
Is online banking for real? Somebody hook a brother up with the 411.
My experiences
My bank, which is really the credit union for the local Army base, has a decent online bill payer.
For each and any bill you have, you can set it up to be paid online. For certain saavy vendors, they offer “e-bills”, which can be paid by the bank electronically. Otherwise, the bank just mails a check for you to the vendor.
Also, for certain saavy vendors, the bank can get your bill information and email you when it’s due. This usually requires you to have signed up on the vendor’s website, and the vendor will usually provide the same service, but having you bank do it consolidates it.
The only think my bank’s online banking doesn’t do I wish it would is allow me to put in reminders for bills I don’t pay through the bank. For example, I have car payments that are automatically deducted from the checking account (for a .5% rate decrease). When I see a summary of the bills I’m paying through my online bank, I’d like to see that payment show up to remind me, but it won’t because it’s not a payment I set up. But otherwise, it’s pretty cool.
Let me know if you want any other info My $.02 Weed
Use it constantly…
I just have to second what Weed said. To get Internet Banking to work to pay all your bills without your intervention, you need the following things:
1. For utilities, get on an “equal payment program”. Virtually all of them have them, from municipal water to your power bill. They’ll re-evaluate your cost every year, so you only have to visit your Billpayer site once a year for these. For many, you can either have them automatically withdraw the cost, or you can have your bank billpay them. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, really. 2. For credit cards, many have electronic export options so that your minimum payment can automatically be made via your bank’s BillPayer program. We have this for our Bank of America credit card, just paying the minimum until it’s that card’s turn to be paid down. 3. All mobile phone carriers have Billpay agreements set up like the credit cards.
It works GREAT. So well, in fact, that we’re kind of surprised when we get a bill in the mail these days 🙂 If it’s a recurring charge, into Billpay it goes, waiting to be paid automatically. Even if it’s some time next year.
We also pretty much use the online stuff exclusively for shuffling money between our accounts. Much easier than a trip to the bank.
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Matthew P. Barnson
This is a big stress relief
I absolutely love our online bill pay. We have several set up through the bank we owe the money to and several set up from our bank, as Matt mentioned, to pay all the utilities. Now I don’t have to remember to sit down and write out all the checks every month. Nothing is ever late. I think it’s an excellent way to bring up your credit scores.
I used to dread making out checks, while dealing with the kids and wondering how we were going to eat because I had skipped bills the month before that needed to be paid today. Now I know how much $$ I have each week to spend on groceries and basic needs. When it’s gone, I wait a couple days for the week to end and then I can withdraw the next week’s alotment.
When we set ours up, we actually paid a few bills a month in advance so that we could set it up to be taken out of a certain paycheck each month without it being late. Everything evens out so that our budget is the same every paycheck. So very worth your time in setting them up online!–
Christy
I must agree. I swear by
I must agree. I swear by internet bill pay. I don’t have anything set up with my bank, just because my cash flow isn’t QUITE so reliable yet that I could guarantee being able to pay everything at the exact same time every month.
However, I have e-pay set up with just about all my vendors/credit cards/ etc… I have a folder for them in my Favorites section of Internet Explorer. Once a week, I just go down the list and see what’s due. For someone who loses EVERYTHING, it’s very hassle free.
I’m sure it’s slightly less secure than paying by mail, though. Nowadays, the impression I get is that it’s not a question of if your identity will get stolen but when.
I should probably do something about that… ah well.
I Fell For A Phishing Scam
True story related to online billpay.
3 days ago I phoned into my bank’s tech support asking for help with setting up their online billpay feature. The bank tech guy tells me that the problem can’t be fixed instantaneously, and that resolution will occur within 48 hours. 48 hours later I get an email from the bank asking me to enter info to get the online web billpay feature established.
I fell for the phishing scam. Luckily, I realized my mistake within a couple hours after entering the information. First, the url that sprung from the email wasn’t the same url as my bank. Second, what was my bank doing asking me to divulge personal info over the internet? I canceled all germane account activity immediately.
The bank’s investigative unit out of New York told me they don’t believe that there’s a mole. Regardless of the number of emails that went to non-banking recipients, the coincidence of all the factors involved (timing, specific email account, feature) makes me think that someone on the inside is selling out info. I’m wondering if there was any spyware included on the HTML link; I’ll have to run a system sweep.
The moral of the story: do not EVER give out personal info in response to an email, even if it’s from a trusted vendor.
Crazy thing about coincidences….
The crazy thing about coincidences is that, with 297 million people in the US, a one-in-a-million chance happens 297 times every single day.
IMHO the chances are good you happened to receive a random blast phish a couple of days after you spoke to your bank. But I’ve worked in a banking call center, and there are plenty of people who have access to call logs. So it could maybe not be a coincidence after all…
(Puts on tinfoil hat, begins lining walls with lead)
Ooh! Ooh! I just had an epiphany! The government didn’t want lead-based paint banned because it was causing mental retardation in children, no, no… they did it because they wanted to have an easier time SPYING on us!
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Matthew P. Barnson
I’m Now With The Times
I wanted to follow up with my own post to let you all know that, five months later, I too now swear by online billpay. Online billpay is the shizz-nizzle. For anyone out there who still hasn’t shifted their bill collection and payment process online, let me urge you to do so. It cuts down on the paperwork and grants you greater control over the payment timeframe.
Yep!
I now agree 100%. The only bills that we end up having to deal with personally are the ones which are both variable amounts and which do not have any means of electronic notification set up with my bank.
I’m all about stuff that frees up my time to hang out with my family or go flying 🙂
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Matthew P. Barnson
Internet Banking Isn’t Something New
This article is interesting, not so much for its reporting on internet banking but because it failed to pay attention to its own historical context:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/060806/14bank.htm
This article gives the impression that internet banking, or consumer bank accounts that exist online only without a physical retail bank, is a new trend. Meanwhile, internet banking has been around for over a decade.
I remember in 1999 when I opened a bank account with an online application and copies of a passport. I remember that lots of internet banks were taking out splashy ads to push their high savings accounts rates. I made deposits via a mailed envelope containing a check and deposit slip. I got cash out from ATMs, paying those early-adopter fees of course. I checked my balance online. I was always making sure that the FDIC logo was displayed proudly on the internet bank site. I figured that I would need to be ready to make a run on the internet bank should the security of the government backing get thrown out alongside all the dreams of those Y2K dot-com pursuits.
I think it needs to be written there are people who had internet bank accounts years ago and decided to go back to a physical bank.
Advances in Online Billpay
I wanted to post again because of recent advances in the range of service provided by Online Billpay systems. It’s now the norm to pay anyone, anywhere (in the U.S.) through a bank’s Online Billpay system. How far we’ve come in eighteen months, eh?
The best part has been regular retail banks offering full Online Billpay service for free. I’m assuming this is their solution to reducing check fraud. By banks printing and writing checks to vendors, they can control physical check fraud at a high-risk security place — the origination and mailing from the home. I’m also assuming that by controlling the home vendor payment system they lock in their customers, ultimately charging for additional services, loans, and outside ad placement.
Anyway, for the common man, the days of personally writing checks are O-V-E-R. Managing household money is now all done online. Meanwhile, these Online BillPay advances ultimately influence how we transact daily payments, from dry cleaning to gas: only use a credit card with the best rewards program.
Check-writing
I couldn’t agree more. We don’t even write checks to pay off one-time bills anymore. We enter the information into our online bill-paying system, and the bank sends the check or e-check, depending on which it can use. If we ever need to pay that party again, we can re-use the same info.
The only thing we write checks for now are small person-to-person transactions and school-related stuff where it needs to accompany a permission form or something. Dance class, preschool, person-to-person payments, and fundraisers get paid with checks, that’s about it.
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Matthew P. Barnson
Not Even That
Matt, I just discovered PayPal Mobile. Forget about writing checks for even person-to-person and fundraiser payments. Done from your cell phone. Are you using this yet?
Not yet…
Paypal has a debit card and checks you can use, too… not using any of that, I exclusively use it for online transactions at this point. I’ll have to look into it.
My main problem is their fee for every transaction. It’s not much, but if you bring in $1000 a month using PP, they’re going to take a sizable chunk of it.
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Matthew P. Barnson