What Billpay services have Immeadiate Funds Funds Removal from your Checking Account?
You can use CheckFree without opening a bank account with another bank. I think they will do it the “old way” rather than the “new way,” which is annoying to me as well, btw. I have not used their free-standing site, so I can’t be 100% sure, though. PayTrust is another one that I’ve seen recommended, but I have not used them myself. Wachovia has just changed their policy recently – they now do not deduct the funds when they are sent, but when they are collected (that is, the check is cashed or the ACH transaction completes). I think that Wachovia uses CheckFree for this service, but I’m not 100% sure — I AM sure they used to use a different service but there were some issues with that service’s checks being forged ~2 years ago. What’s driving this is that people were getting pissy that their funds were neither in their hands nor in the hands of the payee for a certain period of time. So, the customer wasn’t earning interest, for example, on his o
Bank of America does take funds out the date the payment is scheduled vs. the date the check is cashed. A few months ago, I sent a friend a check via BofA’s online bill pay (as an experiment because she was interested in using the service and I was really curious as to what the issued checks look like, what kind of envelope, etc… stupid I know, these things I feel compelled to learn) so we set up a test payment with the intention of her not cashing the check. The funds from the test payment were withdrawn from my account on the date BofA issued the check (which was a day after I made the request–I don’t recall but I might have authorized the payment after business hours). My friend brought over the uncashed check (ledger sized, blue security, embossed data check in a plain-ish white security envelope with a window, BTW). I called BofA CS to ask how to get my money back into my account and they said to cancel the check (and incur a fee, heh). She ended up cashing the check after all
For the most part, it has to do with which version of which billpay software is being used by any particular bank, and from there, which billers have agreements with the billpay provider to do same day/next day payments. After that, it has to do with the bank’s agreement with the billpay provider – how the bank actually pays the provider for the bills that are paid via all the customer accounts. In some cases, the banks have to settle “up front” for bill payments, which would account for the “comes out of my account right away”, or the bank may have negotiated a slightly pricier (for the bank) “good faith” sort of arrangement, where things clear like regular checks and regularly timed ACH. There are very few medium-sized and up banks that have built their own bill pay systems, and it’s the “home grown” method that is most likely to move money same day (or same night). Citibank is the biggie that springs to mind in the home grown world, so maybe check them out. BofA, Wachovia and SunTru
