Mailed in One-time Payment by Check
I do know that a blank check has all the information they need for the electronic transfer. They probably add it as a customer service to streamline future payments. Though I don't think automatically adding it makes good business sense. It is possible that the form used to submit the check included a line to added the account to the list of authorized accounts.  He might have been lucky he didn't set up a recurring payment.  I would check the website to see if there is a tool to remove the account info from the list of payment options. There has to be a way to edit the list so that if you change banks you can update the information, yet not keep the old accounts on the list. Talk to customer service if the website doesn't have a way of removing the account. Tell them that you have to edit the account information. And give them your info. If they balk at the change tell them that they could be committing fraud if the money is pulled from an unauthorized account.
I've been using online billpay for years, at three different banks.  Two were local (a bank and a credit union), and the other is ING Direct.  I haven't had any problems with any of them that weren't self-inflicted (forgetting to enter the bill).  The credit union's system is pretty clunky, but the other two are fine.  One thing to make sure of is to leave enough time for the bill to arrive, just like you would do if mailing a check.  Just have the bill sent a week before its due, and you should be fine.  I usually do this soon after I get the bill, so I don't forget about it.  ING will actually receive bills from some companies automatically, if you wish.  So all you need to do is go online and click pay, and it will know when the due date is and the amount to pay.  For bills that have the same amount each month (mortgage, insurance premiums, etc.), you can set it up to pay automatically each month so you don't have to do anything. Its a bit of a hassle moving banks, and reentering the account numbers, addresses, etc.  Stopping a bill is as easy as clinking delete in the online system.  My current setup is to have all my bills paid through ING, and my paycheck direct deposited.  I can transfer money to/from my local bank in a couple of days if I have checks to deposit, or to use the local ATM.   I short, I would never go back to writing paper checks. "As with many questions here, while littleadv is correct, the real answer is ""each bank may handle this differently."" In my case, I was experimenting with my balance to see the impact of utilization, and I overpaid the current bill before the bill was issued.   The prior balance was paid, but then I sent a payment to bring my account to a credit balance. Further down the statement appears the line -  Your account has a credit balance. We can hold and apply this balance   against future purchases and cash advances, or refund it. If you would   like a check mailed to you in the amount of the credit balance, simply   call us and speak to a representative. You can also see that the ""revolving credit available"" is above the line of credit, implying that someone with a $5000 credit line wanting to charge a $6000 engagement ring can send a higher payment to the account and then make that charge." "You should check if your card issuer provides a ""Bill Pay"" service. I have a CapitalOne card, and I know they don't. But Wells Fargo may, I don't know. However, for that to work your biller must accept credit cards as payments, at least that's the restriction I have with such a feature on my USBank card. That means, that if the company doesn't accept credit cards directly - they're likely not to participate in the credit cards' bill-pay system as well. Some credit cards are actually mailing these balance transfer checks quite frequently trying to ""seduce"" you into taking advantage of your available credit. Unless you really don't have any other choice - you shouldn't. But if that's the only way you have of paying - go for it. That willwill not be treated as a cash advance but rather as balance transfer. You can call the customer service and have them a check mailed to you. You may want to consider talking to your bank and checking if they can give you a line of credit. That would be similar to the credit card (i.e.: revolving credit line) from your credit report/score perspective, but may have lower interest rates." I recommend a Capital One 360 account. Personal experience, I'm a current undergraduate and while Capital One ATMs are everywhere and while account fees do not exist while I work, my normal Capital One bank account would be shut down, every time, over the summer. Why? Because I didn't work over the summer and I couldn't keep the minimum balance in my account. With a 360 account, I don't have to worry about paper working being mailed home when I need it at my dorm (or vice versa) and I don't have to worry about minimum balance fees closing my account (it doesn't screw my credit when that happens, but I have to open up a NEW account; frustrating). The advantages of a 360 account is that it's all online, there are no minimum balance requirements, and that I can easily access it online and even deposit checks with the Capital One app. I doubt it has to do with the check though. Old people can be slow sometimes. I bet a younger person could write the check in a Reasonable amount of time. I lost my debt card a while back and needed groceries before I got my replacement it only added about a minute of transaction time for $200 in groceries which already takes a few minutes just to ring up. I have a loan that was picked up by BofA, too.  They required escrow, but there was a problem with one of their checks to my insurance company where it evidently got lost in the mail.  My insurance company contacted me, and I called BofA, who said it had been paid and may just be taking the insurance company a while to credit all the individual accounts (they send a check for a lot of customers at a time).  Well, since the check wasn't received, my insurance company contacted me again, and I finally straightened it out with everyone.  After that, I complained that it would have been much easier for me if I paid it myself instead of being a middle man, so they canceled my escrow, refunded the money to me, and now I pay the taxes and insurance myself.  I prefer it that way, as it simplifies things.  I've been a little surprised that BofA has been really nice whenever I contact them, and always seems willing to make me happy.  Maybe it's just because I pay on time and have paid a lot of extra on the principal so that there's no danger that I'll default. These are unrelated.  If I subscribe to the paper and pay a month by check, they will just keep billing and delivering the paper.  The virtual card would work for a service that will cancel when the billing attempt fails. i.e. A service that won't just keep active without being paid in advance. The easiest and cheapest way I can think of is the online bill pay service that most banks use. It's free for both of you; regardless of what the bank has to go through to get the payment to its destination, they generally eat the costs. You can use this to pay anyone from your rent to your electric company to your cousin Vinnie. However, I do not think that a business checking account has this feature. Instead, most corporate cash accounts typically have an ACH service attached to them, where for some small, fixed fee like 25 to 50 cents per transaction, they will accept transfer requests in an ACH format. This is how your electric company does auto-debit (if you let them), and how banks do online bill pay to most corporate payees; they, and their bank account numbers, would be verified by and kept on file with each bank that moved a substantial volume of money to this payee.