Both my bank (wellsfargo) and mint.com keep trying to get me to sign up for their bill pay services. I've been hesitant for multiple reasons, but I was wondering what the catch was. Do they make money off it somehow? Do they do something with your info, like use it for marketing purposes? Why do they want me to sign up so badly?

Any of y'all use a service like it?

I bank with Wells Fargo, and I use their online bill pay, but I didn't have to "sign up". It's a service provided free of charge with my account, and I access it online. Most of the bills I still go in and manually enter myself each month (meaning the payee info is saved, but I have to enter how much $ I want to send and confirm the payment). But, I do have my mortgage set up to autopay each month. This is not autodraft set up through the mortgage company, but a "check" (or electronic funds transfer) that I ask WF to do every month. I don't like to do autopays through the vendor that I'm paying the money to.

TXTransplant said:

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I bank with Wells Fargo, and I use their online bill pay, but I didn't have to "sign up". It's a service provided free of charge with my account, and I access it online. Most of the bills I still go in and manually enter myself each month (meaning the payee info is saved, but I have to enter how much $ I want to send and confirm the payment). But, I do have my mortgage set up to autopay each month. This is not autodraft set up through the mortgage company, but a "check" (or electronic funds transfer) that I ask WF to do every month. I don't like to do autopays through the vendor that I'm paying the money to.

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This. So far no issues. It saves a ton of time and a LOT of stamps, plus no lost payments in the mail.

The Wonderer said:

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All of my accounts just auto-debit out of my checking and if that's not possible it's auto-charged to the AmEx which is paid off monthly. Never needed the WF bill pay system.

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I don't allow anyone to draft from my bank acct.

I pay with credit card if possible (airline points) or do BOA bill pay.

dubi said:

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The Wonderer said:

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All of my accounts just auto-debit out of my checking and if that's not possible it's auto-charged to the AmEx which is paid off monthly. Never needed the WF bill pay system.

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I don't allow anyone to draft from my bank acct.

I pay with credit card if possible (airline points) or do BOA bill pay.

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My safeguard is that that account is solely for the paying of bills. Excess cash is placed into different accounts within 24 hours of being direct deposited from my employer.

TXTransplant said:

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I bank with Wells Fargo, and I use their online bill pay, but I didn't have to "sign up". It's a service provided free of charge with my account, and I access it online. Most of the bills I still go in and manually enter myself each month (meaning the payee info is saved, but I have to enter how much $ I want to send and confirm the payment). But, I do have my mortgage set up to autopay each month. This is not autodraft set up through the mortgage company, but a "check" (or electronic funds transfer) that I ask WF to do every month. I don't like to do autopays through the vendor that I'm paying the money to.

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I do the exact same thing with CHASE. I don't think we write more than 1 or 2 checks a month. Like others have said NO ONE has auto draft ability on my account but I do have auto pay for mortgage. The recipient has no access but the banks computer issues a pre set check on the same date every month. I don't even know if we have any stamps in the house and have no idea what postage costs today. Never mail anything !

edit: it looks like Mint Bill Pay is free. So, if you are spending all of your time in Mint maybe it makes more sense to do that vs your bank.

Back in the day it was pretty kickass to pay bills from within Quicken which was integrated to my BoA account. Never even had to log into BoA at the time. Then BoA started charging a $20 fee for paying bills from Quicken along with numerous new fees after the recession hit. I cancelled BoA and moved our banking to Fidelity where everything is free. I still can't pay bills directly from Quicken anymore but Fidelity's bill pay is good.

I use USAA billpay to pay daycare.. they just mail a physical check in the mail. It's automated to do it every week.

Other than that, I use credit card to pay all bills, to get points, except mortgage, which I manually pay from the lender website each month since I sometimes pay extra, and don't always pay it on the 1st.

The banks typically use it as a "sticky" service so that you are less likely to leave them. Their thought is that the more products and services you use of theirs, then the harder it is to leave them for another institution.