How do you pay your bills?

36 comments

1. I pay all my bills by direct debit, the money is automatically taken from my account.

2. Automated billing from my bank account for everything

3. Direct Debit for all my bills; the company automatically takes the money from my bank account. According to Wikipedia, 73% of British household bills are paid this way and 90% of British adults have at least on Direct Debit set up. I’ve no idea how that system would work with cryptocurrency.

4. Everything by direct debit taken from our bank account on a monthly basis. It’s common to pay a fixed amount each month for utilities based on estimated usage and then adjust once or twice a year.

   We also have prepayment accounts where people top up an account in advance for the gas/electricity they will use. It’s normally low income households who are unable to get a regular bill agreement with the supplier due to poor credit history / past missed payments etc, and quite unfair on them as the prepay rates are more expensive.

5. For some recurring bills I have automatic payments up to a certain amount, for others I have have set it so that I’ll have to manually approve the bill in either online bank or banking app. I still get some bills by email or post and those I pay by scanning the bar code with my banking app.

6. Everything gets discounted from my bank account every month, you don’t need to pay the bills manually.

   I can’t imagine having to keep track of all my bills and paying them every month like some people do in the US.

7. Personally:

   The most important (expensive) ones are paid via “PBS – Privat BetaltingsService”, I think it’s probably similar to/the same as what the others refer to as “direct debit”? This is the most widely used in Denmark.

   A few minor things like phone bills/internet/streaming etc. are paid by (automated) credit card or “Mobilepay”.

   Currently none are paid by bank transfer, very rarely a company wants their bills paid this way, but the occasional small independent plumber or similar kind of service does. I once rented an apartment that I paid for via (scheduled) bank transfers.

8. Not possible with credit cards as far as I know. Only bank transfers. Some bills come in paper form, in which case it’s a manual process (online). But usually you get a notification in your online-bank where you can just click on “pay” or set it up to be paid automatically in the future.

9. I pay them by bank transfer.

   For most of them I use my mobile banking app that has a QR code reader so I just scan the bill and it fills the form out for me.

   A few I get electronically directly to my ebanking inbox, so I just have to click the ‘pay’ button next to them.

   I prefer the extra step of having to confirm the payment manually. I’d have all of them sent to my ebanking inbox but not all companies support it.

10. Most bills are directly deducted from my account. No action needed on my part.

    The energy bill I pay by bank transfer for some reason. I just want something that makes me look at my account balance every now and then.

11. Automated billing from my bank account. I don’t know if you can even use a card to pay bills in most cases, but maybe you can?

12. Some via direct debit, only if it has advantages like 5% discount. Others I use MB way a system that connects my bank account and phone number, just insert my number on the water/energy company portal and get an alert on my phone and confirm with my pin or fingerprint.

    Edit: typos

13. Automated bank transfers: for such utility bills, I authorize my bank to transfer the money from my banking account to the provider when the provider submits an invoice for my account. I just receive a copy of the invoice and an indication that the payment request will be submitted to my bank on date XYZ. This authorization is done only once for each provider, and can be withdrawn at any time. This is a very common system, and companies push their customers to adopt this system (some even give a small discount if you do the payments automatically by this system).

    If there is not this system (or if the authorization has not been processed yet, sometimes it happens for the very first invoice), providers will send me an invoice eg every month, by paper mail or by e-mail, and I then make the bank transfer myself with a banking app. For this, there is also a Belgian system called “Zoomit”: if the provider AND your bank offer that service, the invoice is sent electronically along with a link, and the link opens page where all data is already entered, you just have to make a couple of clicks to authorize the payment.

    I only pay Netflix and Spotify subcriptions by another system (Paypal then).

14. Supplies such as water, gas, electricity, internet and telephony are paid by direct debit, mainly thanks to **SEPA** (Single Euro Payments Area).

    This allows citizens and businesses to make payments and receipts in euro within and across national borders, on equal terms and with the same rights and obligations, regardless of the Member State where they are processed, in line with the EU Payment Services Directive.

    By signing the contract with these supply companies, you sign the SEPA mandate and authorise them to debit your bank account on a regular basis. In turn, if I do not agree with a bill or think there has been an error, **I have the right to return that bill within 8 weeks and automatically via online banking, and within 13 months if I receive a charge on my account that I haven’t authorised**.

    Taxes are also paid in the same way, but you cannot return the receipts in case of error (you have to ask the tax authorities to check this)

    In general, you are not allowed to pay by cash or debit/credit card, unless for example there is not enough money in your bank account at the time the charge is made. In such cases they usually allow you to pay the debt immediately by card in the customer area of their website or even by giving them your card details by phone.

    Edit: for taxes it is also common to make a bank transfer associated with the tax assessment number

15. Automatic debit from bank account. The manual part is to allow the monthly debit.

16. All of mine are direct debit, with the exception of my dog walker, milk delivery and window cleaner, those are paid manually.

17. Automatic bank transfer.

    Its quite easy, set up an special account for it so I wont spend too much on my normal account

18. I pay via a bank transfer using the web interface of my bank. I receive the amount due usually by e-mail. In my bank I recall a template previously stored for the respective business and change the amount to send. For some cheap services like cooking gas, I pay a round sum in advance when I feel like it.

19. Tv streaming and phones are by automatic credit card deductions, most of the rest hoes by PBS or automated banktransfers, and a few are banktransfers I have set up myself, manual but only checking in on them once in a while to see if things are good

20. Automated withdrawal on a specific account that my gf and I only use for that. I just verify once a month that everything goes according to plan and that’s it.

21. I have everything set up to automatically withdraw from my bank account. I don’t know how widespread this still is, but I remember in the past some people rather get the bill first and then they wire the money manually because they are afraid they might get charged too much for whatever reason and won’t get their money back if the company has access to the bank account.

22. All of them are paid “virtually”, etheir directly from my bank account (IBAN and Bic numbers) or credit card (which are usually debit cards, not that much real credit card in France). AImost all paiements are automatic. I think you can pay by checks for most of services too, but it’s a minority.

23. 100% of my bills get sent to my mobile bank, I have to confirm some of them manually in my app (by simply clicking “pay”), the others get paid automatically. Almost hands free, I love it especially because I have a lot of bills as I rent a few student rooms and apartments.

24. We use [direct debit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit#Netherlands) here

25. for gas, electricity, rent and water I have a special bank account number set up by my housing coop and a recurring transfer set up with my bank for all these. it’s different every month, so if I end up transferring too much I can just cash out the surplus whenever I feel like. for all other bills (internet) which are constant every month I just have a recurring transfer. so it’s all automatic except I have to make sure I don’t end up with too much surplus or negative balance by the end of the year.

26. Service Provider sends E-invoice to bank, and bank makes automatic bank transfer according to this e-invoice and Standing Order Agreement. I can see my invoices in bank online service.

    I have unsubscribed from all paper and e-mail invoices where possible. I don’t get any paper invoices and get only few e-mail invoices.

    It’s worth to note that banks in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland stopped completely using Direct Debit in 2014, because SEPA DD has much worse conditions than direct debit system what we had before.

27. All bills are paid by [Direct Debit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit) – that is, the money is taken automatically out of the account whenever the bill is due. I get an email telling me when it is about to happen so that I can check it and dispute it if necessary.

    It means that effectively I can forget about it. As long as there is money in the account, the bill will be paid on time automatically.

    It is literally 30 years since I have paid my bills by any other means. I don’t use credit cards, debit cards, cheques or cash for paying bills.

28. Internet banking, manually once per month on my desktop. No banking apps on my phone. You cant properly use a firewall if you dont brake your android, so every app can and may monitor your inputs and data.

29. All my recurring bills are being paid by having authorized the company for automated billing to my bank account. Most of my other payments have been digital as well. In the past month I’ve only used cash to pay for a ferry to cross a river.

30. all bills are added to my rent so landlord pays them when i pay for rent

31. All by direct debit, with the exception of my mobile phone which is paid for through reoccurring payment by my debit card. The reason for the phone is because it is on one of those no frills providers like Smarty or Plusnet, and they are cheaper then the main provider for in effect identical service.

32. Barely.

    But seriously: Most by automated bank transfer, or individual bank transfer, from my bank account. No credit card involved.

33. Manual online debit card payments for most bills.

    Some of them are automated debit card payments but this is implemented by the service provider.

    There is also direct debit available for a few service providers, but not for mine.

    Rent is a manual bank transfer.

34. I don’t know how it works behind the scenes, but I’m convinced that it it different from Country to Country.

    The Danish automatic payment system is from 1972, and predates use of credit card, I.e. there is no credit card numbers involved.

    This is again based on the Postgiro system from 1920, where you got a postal card as a part of an invoice, it had the receivers giro account number, a invoice/customer Id and the amount printed on it. In the old days you had to bring cash and the giro card to the post office to pay bills.

    In the late 60’s the Danish banks, and the postal office joined forces and created an automatic payment system. You could then go to the bank with the giro card for the electricity bil, and ask the bank to pay this automatically.

    Since then all the post offices have been closed, I.e. you can’t pay giro card anywhere, except via. The banks apps.
    The only thing in common with the old system is a numbering system.

35. Electricity and gas is directly taken from my bank account. For health insurance I get the bill in the post and then make a transfer through my Transferwise account. I’m a crossborder worker (FR-CH) so it gets a bit messy with different currencies. I’m gonna try to set up my health insurance as a direct debit if possible.

36. Bank transfers or through so called “Bankgiro” or auto payments through so called “Autogiro”. So it’s both manual and/or automatic depending on what you yourself choose. Some want everything on autogiro and some want some bills to be manual.

    I don’t think anyone generally accepts paying bills through credit/debit card. They most undoubtedly do not take cash. I doubt any company would ever accept crypto as payment seeing as banks don’t allow it and actively work against the usage of crypto.