Report: Bank of America Achieves Highest Adoption of Online Bill Pay
comScore Networks has released the results of a study analyzing usage of online bill payment services at leading banks - "defined as paying a bill online from a checking, savings, or money market account using the functionality in the bill pay portion of the bank's Web site and where the recipient of the money is not the bank itself. According to the study, among those consumers who had one or more checking, savings, or money market accounts and who used online bank bill pay during the quarter with a leading financial institution Bank of America achieved 65 percent penetration in Q4 2006. Wells Fargo ranked second in penetration of online bill payers, with a level of 18 percent, followed by Chase and Wachovia (each achieved 13 percent penetration)."
"Bank of America's industry leading penetration of the online bill payer market is driven by its large online customer base, combined with broad, ongoing marketing campaigns that have successfully enticed customers to use the bank's online bill pay functionality," said Serge Matta, senior vice president of comScore Financial Solutions."The results of this analysis highlight one of the many reasons why Bank of America is the leader in providing online banking services," said Sanjay Gupta, e-Commerce executive at Bank of America. "That leadership reflects our continued focus on providing consumers with strong online security and solutions that meet their financial needs."
Stumble It!
Don't count me in those numbers. I tried this bill pay and got disappointed with it. There are, I think, two types of bill pay you can use. The e-Bill and then the other electronic payments. I tried the second. First, the check that I sent through bill pay arrived late which prompted me to look into the cause.
I found out that once you make a payment through the bill pay system, the money is taken from your account right away and put into another account (probably an escrow account). Then it takes about 5 business days for the payment to be processed after which a check is issued and sent to the payee. In my case the payee received the check after about 7-8 days after I made the payment. Then, the other party cached the check within 2-3 days. There were about 10 days during which my money were "collecting dust" not in my account but in a different account.
That's not how paying with checks works and that's why I'll never fall into this trap again. I'll pay with my own checks which is actually faster than bill pay thank you very much. That way, the money for which I write checks will come out of my account only at the time the check is actually cached.
Posted by: NotMe | February 27, 2007 at 03:48 PM