I’ve been using automated credit card and utility payments for some time, and I realize maybe that’s not the best good idea. They have my bank routing & account information, after all. If they get hacked, all of that could be lifted.
Should I instead be pushing payments from my bank’s billpay service? Does billpay hold back account number information?
If billpay sends out a paper check you can still see the routing and account info printed right on the billpay check, I have noticed.
I don’t understand. I’ve been using my CC for years to pay household basics: insurance, utilities, trash, PGE. etc., and my CC does not show bank info, account, routing
How do you pay off the credit cards?
Same bank as checking, so it’s internal. It’s just a auto transfer from checking to CC.
None of my cc’s are internal to any of my banks. My question is if my current ACH method is insecure.
Sorry, don’t know. Our circumstances are diff.
Interesting. I’m going to send a $1 check via billpay to myself and see what it says. In the Olden Days it had my banking info. Maybe they’ve gotten wiser.
I’ve done that. The check I received had no information relative to my actual acct.
It’s my understanding that a push from a checking account is a one-time event whereas an auto-pay setup allows the named recipient to call the shots… and the amount of the pull.
I’ve only used an auto-pay for a defined-amount contract with T-Mobile and only for the duration of a time-certain payment deal when they started charging for credit card payments.
The combination of insufficient fund penalties and a third party making decisions about the amount to be paid makes me nervous about the pull arrangement.
Auto pay through your financial institution is still bill pay and is still push. I have a couple set up for payments that are the same each month. One gets an electronic transaction the other a paper check. None of my account info is on the check and the CU processes the outgoing payments. The payee has no involvement.
Does it have a date certain for the last payment?
I also have several bills that billpay pays on the schedule I have set. They are recurring bills that do not have an end date, but i can easily cancel them at any time.
I never allow pulls from a vendor and always setup online bill payment. All of my utilities and lenders support electronic payments (1-day), but all of my contractors, owners associations, county tax commissioners get manual checks (7-day). Here is what I have seen regarding my financial information on the checks:
Large banks mostly have their own bill payment platform in-house and thus the checks come from the actual account they are issued from.
Regional and smaller banks mostly use a 3rd party platform (like Checkfree, Fiserv, etc.) where the money is transferred from the original account to a holding account and then all checks come from the holding account.
It can be set up either as “until I stop it” or with a finite date. I also have the option of getting several notifications such as when the electronic payment is pulled, when the super check payment is sent and when the paper check payment clears, etc. Since paper checks are likely sent a week before my assigned payment date, my CU does not pull the money for the check until it actually clears. I have heard other financial institutions may pull at the time the check is sent but no personal knowledge of that policy. If i need to change a payment amount I can just go in and update the amount without stopping and restarting the auto pay.
Tears are streaming down my face because I’ve done the ACH pull thing for a decade and it’s been so easy…
You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to do everything in one place through bill pay.
With my credit union, for payees not set up to receive electronic payments, they send a check that should arrive by a date I set. How long it takes the payee to actually cash the check can vary greatly. The earliest date I can choose for them to receive payment is about a week after I schedule the payment. With electronic transfers, it can be as soon as the next day.
The problem with ACH payments are similar to Debit Cards, the brr ed y aree ed tied to your bank account. Credit cards are totally separate even if get are issued by your bank. Credit cards have Federal protection. Debit cards and ACH do not. I pay everything I possibly can with my Credit card. For the fee that won’t take a CC I use a bank check. I never use automatic draft from my bank s have gotten rid of my debit card. Chances are your debit card or ACH won’t be hacked, but if it is they can take it all! Plus I get the reward points. I bought a used car partially on a credit card. The trick is to be sure you pay it off each month as you would with a check.
Bad news… Charles Schwab Bank paper billpay check exposes my banking information!
Next up… I’m sending a test check to myself from Ally.
From Bogleheads… the better way to run billpay. Does anyone know of a bank that does it this way???
by Katietsu » Mon Jun 10, 2019 11:39 am
Bill Pay for my primary checking account does not include my account number. Instead of my account number, there is a 16 digit transaction number. Every paper check issued has a unique one time use number on it. I have therefore used bill pay for things like membership dues for a club. Sometimes I have the check sent to the payee and sometimes I have the check sent to myself for hand delivery.
I am using a large regional bank. I assumed that if my bank did it that way, they all did. Interesting to see that is not always the case. Know that at least some of the mainstream banks use single transaction numbers not account numbers for bill pay paper checks.
On a totally different account, I just got hit with paper check fraud… it’s an account that is literally one month old, and I’ve written two checks from it. Someone got my check info, and printed a low-quality version and took $495 from me. The fake account check number is bogus, I still have that one in my possession.