How To Pay All Of Your Bills Electronically?

The internet has become the tool of choice for conducting just about any means of business nowadays. Newspapers are quickly becoming obsolete as more people turn to the internet to get their news. Cyber Monday has even passed Black Friday as the day that more Christmas shopping is done than any other day. With more and more people using the internet to do just about anything, it should come as no surprise that many do all of their banking online as well.

With the advent of electronic banking and online bill pay, there's almost no reason to visit a bank any more. Online you can open and close accounts, transfer money from one account to another and pay all of your bills. Online bill pay's greatest advantage is that it saves you both postage costs and potential late fees.

There are two primary ways to arrange to have your bills paid electronically. The first is by working directly with the company in question to handle the bill payment. Many companies will gladly take your banking information and make a monthly draft from your account to pay the full balance of your bill. You can make the days of forgetting your bills or worrying if your check got there on time a thing of the past. Everything happens automatically. Better yet, in most cases there's no fee for setting up this service. Simply contact the company whose bill you wish to pay and ask them how it's done.

There will be some bills in which this option is not a possibility. For bills like these, utilize your bank's online bill pay service. Most banks now offer free bill payment as a part of their checking account features (although some have begun charging for this so check with your bank to see if yours is free). With this service, you simply enter the company name and address, the account number for the bill you wish to pay and the amount you wish to pay online and your bank will take care of the payment for you. Again, you save money as you won't have to pay postage fees.

Be careful though. Online bill payment isn't quite as automatic as the automatic draft from your bank account. The bank still cuts a check and sends them to the company so you'll have to allow several days lead time to get the checks to their destination on time. With either method, however, it's worth the initial time investment to get it set up because of the cost and hassle you'll avoid that comes with writing checks and licking envelopes.