How To Pay Your Bills Online

When you pay bills online, life can be easier for you. Online bill pay service, offered by many banks and credit unions, makes it easier to organize your bills and pay them when they’re due. With rent or mortgage, cable, electricity, credit card payments and more on your hands, online bill pay can save time and help you avoid late fees.

Paying your bills online isn’t a new thing. The service has been around as a way to pay merchants for almost two decades. For some, you must keep track of merchant websites and various providers to make payments. However, with online bill pay from your bank, you don’t have to.

This means, you don’t need to go through the tedious process of paying for a T-Mobile phone bill on the T-Mobile website or paying off a Chase credit card with Chase bill pay, then writing a check to your landlord.

You could do it all from your financial institution’s website. As a bonus, many banks and credit unions guarantee your payments will arrive on time. If they don’t they’ll reimburse your late fee.

How Does Online Bill Pay Work?

Online bill pay is straightforward: Log in to your bank account, go to its online bill pay feature, then select the bill provider. If you haven’t set up the provider in your account yet, you’ll need to add it by submitting your account number and billing address. Then, be sure to authorize your bank to send payments for you.

Payments can be sent by your bank electronically or via paper check. This way, you can pay even if the biller isn’t set up online. Therefore, your bank can send a payment to a person like your landlord, without needing a checkbook. You can also choose a one-time payment or set up a recurring one.

Many banks offer basic bill pay service for free with their checking accounts, though they may charge for extra features. If you’re trying to lower bank fees, signing up for free bill pay service is a good way to keep track of your accounts while avoiding charges.

Many merchants and service providers offer the option of an e-bill (an electronic version of your paper bill) into your online bill pay account. Your bank can alert you by email if an e-bill arrives. Typically, you can choose whether to pay the entire balance, just the minimum due or another amount.

How To Set Up Bill Pay

Set it up as soon as you can to save time and headaches in the long run. Each bank or credit union will have its own rules, but there’s a general set of things you should do:

1. Gather your bills, including account numbers and the addresses to where you mail the payments.
2. Enter each biller’s information into your bank’s online bill pay platform.
3. Choose when to send the payment.
4. Select recurring or one-time payment.
5. Set reminders to track when each bill is due.

Online bill pay helps you organize bills and keep track of due dates. It’s also easier to see where your money is going to make sure you have enough funds available to cover each payment. You receive and pay your bills all through your bank all in one place.

How To Set Up Automatic Online Bill Pay

If you don’t like constantly checking your account for bills to pay, automated online bill paying will let you facilitate recurring payments on a regimented and regular basis. For example, your online bill paying service can pay both your monthly phone bill and your quarterly insurance payment.

You can also authorize your service providers to pull money from your account for one-time payments, without any activity on your part. In these cases, the service provider directly asks the online bill paying company for payment as needed. Then, the payment is made without you needing to do anything.

As a warning, if you authorize these types of payments, carefully budget your finances. You must keep enough available funds in your account to cover these payments.

Author’s Verdict

When you set up online bill pay to pay bills online, you can save time, reduce paperwork, and make life easier. When you pay your bills online you should schedule payment a few days before the payment is due. It will allow the payment to be on time if there’s a holiday or weekend. Plus, you’ll have time to make corrections if the payment didn’t go through for some reason.

Though it’s tempting to forget about your bills once you set up automatic payments, it’s important to check periodically to make sure everything is being paid on time. It’ll prevent you from letting a mistake through. Make sure to check your bills each month to make sure the payment or bill hasn’t increased or that the account number hasn’t changed.

Don’t have a bank account set up? If you’re interested, check out some of the best bank promotions and savings promotions. Many of these featured banks and credit unions allow you to set up bill pay to easily pay your bills online.