Banking, Accounts, Etc

15/ Your Online banking

Online payment services come in a couple of forms. The first sort acts as an electronic checkbook that lets you send checks to utility companies, your landlord, and other billers through your computer.

Instead of writing a check, licking an envelope, and using a stamp, you just have to do a bit of clicking and typing. Another rising brand of service works like a debit account that lets you instantly send money through e-mail to virtually anyone.

We took a look at a couple of the most popular sites marketing online payment tools and found they can make paying bills more convenient without saddling users with a big new bill. Many of the features described below, especially the bill-payment services, also may be available as part of your bank's online offerings, so before signing up for something new, check out what you may already have. 
 

As with converting anything in our sloppy analog world to digital efficiency, switching over to online bill payment involves a little work. Typing in your billers' addresses is the chief task, and you'll want to go over the information a couple of times to make sure no typos in the address or account number keep your money from arriving when it should.

After the first month, however, paying bills becomes almost ridiculously easy. From one screen, you can input the amounts owed to everyone and when the checks should be sent out, then click a button to wrap up the process. Recurring payments of the same amount are even easier, and you can set them up to run automatically.

The old-timer of this group is CheckFree (https://mycheckfree.com/br/wps?sp=10001&rq=bfbl&source=router ),  CheckFree and its competitors transfer money directly from your checking account to the accounts your creditors hold. If electronic transfer isn't possible, CheckFree cuts a paper check and sends it through the mail. Either way, it's the same to you—a little bit of typing, a couple clicks, and the process is done.


Money Transfers. Online check services work well for paying off all your monthly bills and pay for themselves in convenience to you. The convenience, however, stops at your end when you're sending money to individuals who, unlike large utility companies and the like, don't accept electronic transfers. For instance,

if you use an online check service to pay some auctioneer for a cowboy lamp you bought on eBay, the seller will simply receive a paper check in the mail. That person must then deposit the check somewhere, and he or she will probably wait for the check to clear before sending you the goods.

If you're looking for a way to eliminate this transfer to paper, your search is over. A new group of online services creates a system of debit accounts Internet users can employ to exchange money.

The system basically works like this: You set up a debit account with one of these companies and fund it by typing in a credit card or debit card number or sending in a regular check. At the fund-exchange company's Web site, you can allocate that money to different recipients by entering their e-mail addresses and the amount you want to pay.

At that point, the company automatically sends out an e-mail to the person you specified. This e-mail includes instructions for how the person can set up a debit account to accept the money. Once everything is in place, the money is transferred from your account to theirs. The big advantage to the system is that the money is not transferred unless it is there, and the payment clears instantly, unlike a paper check.

PayPal (http://www.paypal.com ) is the most famous of these debit systems. PayPal makes buying easy by automatically charging your credit card to pay someone if there isn't already enough money in your PayPal account.

To withdraw money from PayPal, you can set up an electronic transfer into your standard checking account or request a check be sent in the mail. Of course, the electronic option is much faster.

PayPal is free for consumer use as long as you accept less than $500 in credit card transactions every six months.

Businesses must pay fees, which provide PayPal with revenue to keep going. PayPal also stores the aggregated balances of all their customers' accounts in a money market fund, and they keep the interest.


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