Why do banks encourage me to use online bill payment?
Another reason for banks to push this is sitckyness.  Once you have all of your bills setup, its more trouble to change banks.  This reduces the customer turnover rate, which lowers their costs. Most transactions that the bank performs for you are electronic ACH transactions, so the costs to them are minimal in the long run.  Most banks do it now to keep up with the competition.  Almost every bank does it now, so they have to do it to attract new business and keep existing customers. Also, the more you rely on the bank and use them to pay bills, the more they learn about you over time and can use that data in overall marketing plans.  It's easier for them to record it into their system if it is all electronic to begin with. The paper check method also allows the bank to use your money while the check is in the mail.   My bank debits my account immediately, so while my $100 utility bill is traveling the U.S. Postal System for two days, they can make use of my $100 in whatever slush fund they like. "One other aspect of this is that the bank will plan to eventually approach the merchant that they are sending paper checks to and say ""why don't you sign up with us and give us your ACH info, and we won't send you checks?""  And a lot of merchants will say ""sure"", because someone has to open those checks and take them down to the bank, and that isn't free.  And that time while the money is in the mail, or sitting on someone's desk to be deposited, that is money that isn't working for you.  So everyone wins." It’s more convenient for both you and the bank; its much simpler to handle things electronically than it is to go through paperwork. Also, its eco-friendly and by saying that they care about the environment, banks earn brownie points with environmentally-conscious customers.
"It is true that all else being equal, you will pay a lower amount of total interest by paying down your highest interest rate debts first.  However, all else is not always equal.  I'm going to try to come up with some reasons why it might be better in some circumstances to pay your debts in a different order.  And I'll try to use as much math as possible.  :) Let's say that your goal is to eliminate all of your debt as fast as possible.  The faster you do this, the lower the total interest that you will pay.  Now, let's consider the different methods that you could take to get there: You could pay the highest interest first, you could pay the lowest interest first, or you could pay something in the middle first.  No matter which path you choose, the quicker you pay everything off, the lower total interest you will pay.  In addition to that, the quicker you pay everything off, the difference in total interest paid between the most optimal method and the least optimal method will be less.  To put this in mathematical notation: limt→0 Δ Interest(t) = 0 Given that, anything we can do to speed up the time it takes to get to ""debt free"" is to our advantage. When paying large amounts of debt as fast as possible, sacrifice is needed.  And this means that psychology comes into play.  I don't know about you, but for me, gamifying the system makes everything easier.  (After all, gamification is what gets us to write answers here on SE.) One way to do this is to eliminate individual debts as quickly as possible.  For example, let's say that I've got 10 debts.  5 of them are for $1k each.  3 of them are for $5k each, 1 is a $20k car loan, and 1 is a $100k mortgage.  Each one has a monthly payment. Let's say that I've got $3k sitting in the bank that I want to use to kickstart my debt reduction.  I could pay all $3k toward one of my larger loans, or I could immediately pay off 3 of my 10 loans.  Ignore interest for the moment, and let's say that we are going to pay off the smallest loans first.  When I eliminate these three loans, three of my monthly payments are also gone.  Now let's say that with the money I was paying toward these eliminated debts, and some other money I was able to scrape together $500 a month that I want to use toward debt reduction.  In four months, I've eliminated the last two $1k debts, and I'm down to 5 debts instead of 10.  Achievement Unlocked! Instead of this strategy, I could have paid toward my largest interest rate.  Let's say that was one of the $5k loans.  I paid the $3k toward the bank to it, and because I still had all the monthly payments after that, I was only able to scrape together $400 a month extra toward debt reduction.  In four months, I still have 10 debts. Now let's say that after these four months, I have a bad month, and some unexpected expenses come up.  If I've eliminated 5 of my debts, my monthly payments are less, and I'll have an easier month then I would have had if I still had 10 monthly payments to deal with. Each time I eliminate a debt, the amount extra I have each month to tackle the remaining debts gets bigger.  And if your goal is eliminating debt quickly, these early wins can really help motivate you on.  It really feels like you are getting somewhere when your monthly bills go down.  It also helps you with the debt free mindset.  You start to see a future where you aren't sending payments to the banks each month.  This method of paying your smaller debts first has been popularized in recent years by Dave Ramsey, and he calls it the debt snowball method. There might be other reasons why you would pick one debt over another to pay first.  For example, let's say that one of your loans is with a bank that has terrible customer service.  They don't send you bills on time, they process your payment late, their website stinks, they are a constant source of stress, and you are getting sick of them.  That would be a great reason to pay that debt first, and never set foot in that bank again. In conclusion: If you have a constant amount of extra cash each month that you are going to use to reduce your debt, and this will never change, then, yes, you will save money over the long run by paying the highest interest debt first.  However, if you are trying to eliminate your debt as fast as possible, and you are sacrificing in your budget, sending every extra penny you can scrape together toward debt reduction, the ""snowball"" method of knocking out the small debts first can help motivate you to continue to sacrifice toward your goal, and can also ease the cash flow situation in difficult months when you find yourself with less extra to send in." Other than the options pointed out by MoneyOne, I would like to add one more. If the bank that you want to transfer money from has bill pay facility, then you can send yourself a check for the required amount. Then you could deposit this check in the bank where you want to money transferred. I do agree that this is a long way method of transferring money between banks, but this is the only way to do it if your (From) bank doesn't allow bank to bank transfers for your (To) bank or charges you money for each transfer. Normally, most banks give you access to bill pay facility free of charge if you use online banking. I also believe that you could even use it with a savings account, but don't quote me on that. Also, I do know that Bank Of America has started accepting checks through their ATMs, so if your (To) bank does something similar, you would not even need to go to a physical branch. Given your needs, GNUcash will do swimmingly. I've used it for the past 3 years and while it's a gradual learning process, it's been able to resolve most stuff I've thrown at it. Schedule bills and deposits in the calendar view so I can keep an eye on cash flow.  GNUcash has scheduled payments and receipts and reconcilation, should you need them. I prefer to keep enough float to cover monthly expenses in accounts rather than monitor potential shortfalls.   Track all my stock and mutual fund investments across numerous accounts. It pulls stock, mutual and bond quotes from lots of places, domestic and foreign. It can also pull transaction data from your brokers, if they support that.  I manually enter all my transactions so I can keep control of them. I just reconcile what I entered into Quicken based on the statements sent to me. I do not use Quicken's bill pay There's a reconciliation mode, but I don't use it personally. The purpose of reconcilation is less about catching bank errors and more about agreeing on the truth so that you don't incur bank fees. When I was doing this by hand I found I had a terrible data entry error rate, but on the other hand, the bayesian importer likes to mark gasoline purchases from the local grocery store as groceries rather than gas. I categorize all my expenditures for help come tax time. GNUcash has accounts, and you can mark expense accounts as tax related. It also generates certain tax forms for you if you need that. Not sure what all you're categorizing that's helpful at tax time though. I use numerous reports including. Net Worth tracking, Cash not is retirement funds and total retirement savings. Tons of reports, and the newest version supports SQL backends if you prefer that vs their reports. "Actually in Finland on some bank + debit/credit card + online retailer combinations you type in your card details as you normally do, but after clicking ""Buy"" you get directed to your own bank's website which asks you to authenticate yourself with online banking credentials. It also displays the amount of money and to which account it is being paid to. After authentication you get directed back to the retailer's website. Cannot say why banks in US haven't implemented this." I'm not sure if you are including the use of credit cards in the intent of your quesiton.  However, I will give you some good reasons I use them even when I can pay cash: 1) I get an interest free loan for almost 30 days as long as I don't carry balances. 2) I get a statement detailing where I am spending my money that is helpful for budgeting. I'd never keep track to this level of detail if I were using cash. 3) Many cards offer reward programs that can be used for cash back. 4) It helps maintain my credit rating for those times I NEED to buy something and pay it off over time (car, house, etc.) 5) Not so much an issue for me personally, but for people that live paycheck to paycheck, it might help to time your cash outflows to match up with your inflows. For a business, I think it is mostly a cash flow issue. That is, in a lot of B2B type businesses customers can pay very slowly (managing their own cash flows). So your revenue can sometimes lag quite a bit behind the expenses that were associated with them (e.g payroll). A business line of credit can smooth out the cash flow, especially for companies that don't have a lot of cash reserves. I too was very confused when I tried to be tricky and paid down my balance BEFORE the bill date. I thought this would be a great thing because it would show my utilization near zero percent. The opposite happen, it dropped my credit score from 762 to 708. Here is the best example I can come up with when it comes to utilization. Lets pretend you are an insurance company and you trying to figure out who are the best risk drivers. The people that drive 10% of the day are a better risk than the people that drive 50% of the day. The people that drive 50% of the day are a better risk than the people that drive 90% of the day. Here is the rub when people drive 0%. When you look at the people at 0% they appear to be walking, busing or flying. What they are NOT doing is driving. Since they are not driving (using Credit) they are viewed as POOR drivers since they are not keeping up on their driving skills. (Paying bills, watching how they spend, and managing their debt). So, now before the billing date I pay down my balance to something between 5 to 10% of my utilization. After the bill is issued, I pay it off in FULL. ( I am not going to PAY these crazy interest rates). What shows up on my credit report is a person that is driving his credit between 5 and 10% utilization. It shows I know I how to manage my revolving accounts. I know it's dumb, you would think they reward people that have zero debt, I don't hate banks I hate the game. ( I do love me some reward points =)) Only reason I can think of is that having a credit card, or several, is handy for buying stuff on-line, or not having to haul around a fat wallet full of cash.    Of course for some of us, getting the cash back and 0% interest periods are nice, too, even if we don't really need the money.  Same as for instance trying to get good mpg when you're driving, even if you could easily afford to fill up a Hummer.  It's a game, really. When you want to pay a bill on line there are several ways to do it. You can give them your credit card details: Name on Card, zip code, credit card number, and 3 or 4 digit security code on the back. Most of the information is available on the card or via an easy Google search. If the crook has your card they can use it to buy something.  You can contact your bank's website and establish a one time or recurring transfer. You provide the information about the person/company. Your bank knows who you are because you used a secure system and your password. Their bank accepts the money because who would refuse money, they don't care who you are. You can provide the company with your bank info (bank number, your account number, and your name). If your bank limits their transactions via this method only to legitimate organizations, then your money will only be sent to legitimate organizations. But if the organization has no way of knowing who is on the other end of the phone or webpage, they may be withdrawing money from a bank account without the account owners permission.  In the example article a person found a charity that had lax security standards, they were recognized by the bank as a legitimate organization, so the bank transferred the money. The charity will point to the form and say they had permission from the owner, but in reality they didn't.  The subject of the article was correct, all the info required is on every check. It is just that most people are honest, and the few security hurdles that exist do stop most of the fraud.