The paypal option to pay utilities has already vanished for many, myself included. Well documented on another paypal thread. I use push for utilities.Obviously they do if you want to autopay. I don't use autopay for my electric/gas and water companies either, but it is due to credit card fees rather than security reasons. I pay them through PayPal at no cost using a rewards credit card. That option will probably disappear eventually.more exposed you are.
My bank MUST have my bank acct # on their website or I can't do online banking, but why does my electric company need to have my checking acct # on their website ? No reason is the answer.If you miss a payment deadline for matters such as taxes or insurance, there can be dire consequences, not only financial penalties, but lapse in coverage.In the rare occasion that a biller did not get the payment (I can't remember when that happened last with electronic payments which are most of my push bills) your bank will resolve the issue. I don't know what problems you have heard about push, but the only problem could be if the receiver claims not to have received and this is what your bill pay vendor will resolve.
These are not matters for which the billpay service could indemnify you for. Instant payments such as FedNow would be very beneficial, especially if they could be verified instantly by the payee by checking your account balance on their web site.
As far as dire consequences for late payment, that is ridiculous. I am given 1.5 months extra time for my property taxes. April 1 payment can be paid until May 15. I could walk and hand them a paper check and never be late. Property and auto insurance generally gives you a 30 day grace period for late payments, before cancelation. I think a missing payment can be resolved even with snail mail paper checks, certainly 2 day ach push payments. Most places offer alerts warning you of late payments, payments due soon. I don’t know how anyone would meet dire consequences unless you simply don’t have the cash to make payment. If so then no form of payment system would help.
I look forward to using Fednow someday, but not a serious problem that we don’t have it yet. In fact in cases where banks offer RTP transfers between my banks, my attitude is “if free why not” but I wouldn’t pay any fee to get $ transferred 1-2 days sooner. Automation is the main benefit, speed of the automation is a secondary benefit. In the cases where rtp was offered, I tried it and while nice, did not change how I do things at all.
Statistics: Posted by beyou — Wed Apr 24, 2024 3:32 am — Replies 88 — Views 7069