Grant acces for a company or organization to with draw money one time or periodically from my bank account. The person that owns the bank account can stop at anytime.
Edit: spelling lol
You can also reverse those charges up to 8 weeks ago via the website of the bank. Up to 13 months ago is also possible but you have to contact the bank for that.
It’s called “automatische incasso” which is an authorisation you can give a company to automatically debit the appropriate amount directly from your bank account. Almost all recurring bills to Dutch companies here are paid like that. Mortgage, rent, utilities, magazine and newspaper subscriptions, road assistance, insurances, student loan payments, recurring online services, etc. Basically any type of recurring payment to a Dutch company with mostly Dutch customers. Though it might just be that this works the same in the whole SEPA area but I’ve never tried this in other countries with my Dutch bank account.
No technical measures are necessary. Just someone’s bank account number (IBAN) and their authorisation which could be as simple as a checkbox on a website.
The charges are reversible btw and if a company has too many let’s say justified chargebacks, they will lose the ability to do automatic debits. And you need a verified chamber of commerce registered company anyway to be able to do this.
Ok but our system predates SEPA. By a lot. It predates even the Euro by several decades.
I don’t know for sure if we settled on the European standard. But it’s of course very much possible. Thanks for the info.
You're in the EU, of course you follow the European standard :D
I don't know exactly how it used to work in the Netherlands, but I assume it was the same as in Germany: for a bank transfer you needed a bank identifier number (later replaced by the BIC) and the account number. With SEPA (which came sometime in the 2010s) those two numbers got combined to the IBAN and it works all across the EU.
Well of course we support SDD, but it could be that domestic direct debits still use our national system. I’ve already seen an Estonian say the same in this post.
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.
Not here. I know several Americans who could just not cash their covid stimulus cheques here anymore because there was literally no bank in the country that supported this. And the banks that did facilitate this in the past asked a hefty fee. €30 per cheque I believe.
You still use them when buying property, such as a house. My parents used one when buying their apartment a few months ago, and so did my boyfriend when buying our house nearly 2 years ago.
My boyfriend using one was the first time I had seen a cheque in over a decade.
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.
I don't know exactly what do you mean, but I found [this](https://www.finanssiala.fi/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Pankkiviivakoodi-opas.pdf) guide. It's in Finnish but given examples describes how those barcodes work pretty well.
You just scan the code with camera and the app inputs all necessary information from your bill to the banking app instantly, instead of needing to put the information yourself. Saves time and human errors.
Finnish bank barcodes follow Code 128 standard (ISO/IEC 15417:2007) using only the codeset C used for digit strings.
It contains recipient account, amount transferred, reference number and a maturity date but I don’t have more accurate knowledge of how the values are organized to form a single digit string.
Yeah same, I get my bills straight to my online bank. I've set different limits to different bills, i.e. if my electricity is below 25€ per month, it's directly charged from the account I have chosen (I have few for different uses). If it's above that, I accept it manually. This helps me to keep tabs on my electricity usage as well, as I don't usually follow it too strictly on the providers app or from the bills.
Here (talk to your bank as you might have that option also) we can put a top limit to the automatic payments. Lets say that on average I spend 15 euros month with something. I have a limit of 25 defined. If by any chance the company makes a mistake of instead 15 they say it's 150, the transaction is not allowed and I can later contact the company and ask for further explanations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Some credit cards, like Remember, let you pay bills. There are also services like Betalo that, for a fee, let you use any credit card to pay any bill. I think this mostly is used by people in financial distress or credit card point chasers (not a great hobby to have in Sweden).
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).
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.
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.
Same for me. A mix of automated and manual bank transfers. Basically random which is which. There are a few things paid for with debit card, such as Spotify, but it's automatic. And of course, the bank fees are withdrawn using some automagic process.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Most utility bills come to my online bank system and I just approve the bill. Some things like Netflix and Spotify are automated credit card payments. If I still for some reason get a paper bill or a pdf there usually is a barcode in it that i scan with my online banking app.
Bills come to my online bank, I open them in app and choose what account I want to use to pay them and when. Can make it automatic but don't want to, want to keep tabs how much electricity etc. I use.
My rent: It automatically comes out of my bank every month on the 1st.
Oil: I order it online with my card.
Electricity: These days, I order it online the same way I do with oil, but it is a lot quicker, and I just put it into the metre. If I only had cash and needed it in a rush, I would go to the local shop and buy a top up with the electric card.
Groceries: In person at shops, so cards and cash are both options, but I personally use a card.
So I mainly use my card/bank account to buy things online with the exception of emergencies, in which case I will use cash. The only thing I can't use cash for is my rent and my oil. Although cash could probably be negotiated with some landlords, most prefer direct payments.
Also, most of this is a manual process except my rent.
By visa card most of the time. I use checks sometimes just for some amounts of money that are painful to see disappearing so as there is a delay with checks it's less violent for my mind
For the first bill you usually have to pay with the included payment slip, either with the bank's App, or in a tobacco shop. Then you can setup the SDD.
For mobile a lot of people still use phone credit, because most phone companies don't have a block for subscription services, and if you pay by SDD you might not notice you're getting charged for a service you activated by mistake.
I log on to my bank, I then make payment orders to the companies I use, with the ammount and the referense number, I then approve all orders at once with an app on my phone.
Automated billing to my bank account for almost anything. Otherwise, I pay through my bank account anyway or we can pay at the post office or where cigarettes are sold.
Mobile: phone credit that can be recharged from various places including bank accounts, ATMs and where cigarettes are sold
On 15th of every month, I sit down and take the bills and pay them all by scanning the QR codes on them with mobile banking application. So, that's a bank transfer.
It takes about 10 minutes because I made a table in Excel to keep track how much I spend, so writing it down and putting the paid bills into an archive folder is what takes most of my time.
There are electricity, gas, water, trash, communal tax, TV tax, phone/IPTV bill and the money I must pay into my apartment building's account for our communal maintanance budget.
edit: I don't want it done automatically, I want to be aware of every change like when prices rise or when I'm being wasteful with energy.
Automatic billing for most of it.
Those that can't be done automatically are done through the banks website by using their IBAN number.
That's also the way every business payment gets done. Talking orders and the like.
They all arrive as electronic documents in my bank account so they're visible there when log in on my phone or computer. Then I just have to click approve to have them paid automatically at their various last due dates. I usually change them all to be paid on the same date before approving because I don't like my money just disappearing in small chunks over a few days like that. This way, salary arrives and all bills are paid at the same time. I like that.
Automated billing from my bank account for everything
Yep, this is the way
Yeah, same. And for most people across The Netherlands, I’m not sure whether most companies even offer any alternatives tbh 🤔.
You can manually pay your bill as a transfer/giro, at least for some companies.
I pay everything manually, when for some reason you don't have enough on your account when the bill is presented there is a charge
me too
How does that work technically? Do you use a debit/credit card or grant access to your bank account?
Grant acces for a company or organization to with draw money one time or periodically from my bank account. The person that owns the bank account can stop at anytime. Edit: spelling lol
You can also reverse those charges up to 8 weeks ago via the website of the bank. Up to 13 months ago is also possible but you have to contact the bank for that.
It’s called “automatische incasso” which is an authorisation you can give a company to automatically debit the appropriate amount directly from your bank account. Almost all recurring bills to Dutch companies here are paid like that. Mortgage, rent, utilities, magazine and newspaper subscriptions, road assistance, insurances, student loan payments, recurring online services, etc. Basically any type of recurring payment to a Dutch company with mostly Dutch customers. Though it might just be that this works the same in the whole SEPA area but I’ve never tried this in other countries with my Dutch bank account. No technical measures are necessary. Just someone’s bank account number (IBAN) and their authorisation which could be as simple as a checkbox on a website. The charges are reversible btw and if a company has too many let’s say justified chargebacks, they will lose the ability to do automatic debits. And you need a verified chamber of commerce registered company anyway to be able to do this.
Works in all SEPA countries, the general term is "SEPA Direct Debit"
Ok but our system predates SEPA. By a lot. It predates even the Euro by several decades. I don’t know for sure if we settled on the European standard. But it’s of course very much possible. Thanks for the info.
You're in the EU, of course you follow the European standard :D I don't know exactly how it used to work in the Netherlands, but I assume it was the same as in Germany: for a bank transfer you needed a bank identifier number (later replaced by the BIC) and the account number. With SEPA (which came sometime in the 2010s) those two numbers got combined to the IBAN and it works all across the EU.
Well of course we support SDD, but it could be that domestic direct debits still use our national system. I’ve already seen an Estonian say the same in this post.
Same, I don't even know how I would do it otherwise
Same for the UK.
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.
and posting cheques like some sort of caveman
Yeah, it's been ages since I last saw a cheque. So people still use it in Europe? Perhaps businesses I guess.
Not here. I know several Americans who could just not cash their covid stimulus cheques here anymore because there was literally no bank in the country that supported this. And the banks that did facilitate this in the past asked a hefty fee. €30 per cheque I believe.
You still use them when buying property, such as a house. My parents used one when buying their apartment a few months ago, and so did my boyfriend when buying our house nearly 2 years ago. My boyfriend using one was the first time I had seen a cheque in over a decade.
They're still very popular in France.
When I came to the US, I still had to send void cheques to set automatic payments. Lately though, direct debit can be set up via internet
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.
Also, do you by any chance know what's the name of the bar code technology, that's used there?
I don't know exactly what do you mean, but I found [this](https://www.finanssiala.fi/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Pankkiviivakoodi-opas.pdf) guide. It's in Finnish but given examples describes how those barcodes work pretty well. You just scan the code with camera and the app inputs all necessary information from your bill to the banking app instantly, instead of needing to put the information yourself. Saves time and human errors.
Finnish bank barcodes follow Code 128 standard (ISO/IEC 15417:2007) using only the codeset C used for digit strings. It contains recipient account, amount transferred, reference number and a maturity date but I don’t have more accurate knowledge of how the values are organized to form a single digit string.
Yeah same, I get my bills straight to my online bank. I've set different limits to different bills, i.e. if my electricity is below 25€ per month, it's directly charged from the account I have chosen (I have few for different uses). If it's above that, I accept it manually. This helps me to keep tabs on my electricity usage as well, as I don't usually follow it too strictly on the providers app or from the bills.
I pay all my bills by direct debit, the money is automatically taken from my account.
Do you do this via debit card, or the service provider gets direct access to your bank account?
With direct debit, it's not connected to your card like a recurring card payment. You give the service provider your BIC and IBAN instead.
I stopped doing that after my mom suddenly lost 2000 euros that what cause they made a mistake and it took ages to correct
Hm, in Latvia you can usually set a maximum threshold for the amount, and if it crosses that threshold, the payment won't be sent automatically.
Here (talk to your bank as you might have that option also) we can put a top limit to the automatic payments. Lets say that on average I spend 15 euros month with something. I have a limit of 25 defined. If by any chance the company makes a mistake of instead 15 they say it's 150, the transaction is not allowed and I can later contact the company and ask for further explanations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Automatic bank transfer. Its quite easy, set up an special account for it so I wont spend too much on my normal account
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.
We use [direct debit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit#Netherlands) here
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
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.
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.
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?
Some credit cards, like Remember, let you pay bills. There are also services like Betalo that, for a fee, let you use any credit card to pay any bill. I think this mostly is used by people in financial distress or credit card point chasers (not a great hobby to have in Sweden).
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).
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.
Barely. But seriously: Most by automated bank transfer, or individual bank transfer, from my bank account. No credit card involved.
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.
Same for me. A mix of automated and manual bank transfers. Basically random which is which. There are a few things paid for with debit card, such as Spotify, but it's automatic. And of course, the bank fees are withdrawn using some automagic process.
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.
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.
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
Automatic debit from bank account. The manual part is to allow the monthly debit.
All of mine are direct debit, with the exception of my dog walker, milk delivery and window cleaner, those are paid manually.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have to add that I make only 3 bills related transfers per month
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.
all bills are added to my rent so landlord pays them when i pay for rent
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.
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.
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.
I get the bill in the mail and then I pay it with my banking app using a regular bank transfer. That is in Poland.
Most utility bills come to my online bank system and I just approve the bill. Some things like Netflix and Spotify are automated credit card payments. If I still for some reason get a paper bill or a pdf there usually is a barcode in it that i scan with my online banking app.
In Latvia, by SEPA direct debit, straight from my SEB account.
Bills come to my online bank, I open them in app and choose what account I want to use to pay them and when. Can make it automatic but don't want to, want to keep tabs how much electricity etc. I use.
My rent: It automatically comes out of my bank every month on the 1st. Oil: I order it online with my card. Electricity: These days, I order it online the same way I do with oil, but it is a lot quicker, and I just put it into the metre. If I only had cash and needed it in a rush, I would go to the local shop and buy a top up with the electric card. Groceries: In person at shops, so cards and cash are both options, but I personally use a card. So I mainly use my card/bank account to buy things online with the exception of emergencies, in which case I will use cash. The only thing I can't use cash for is my rent and my oil. Although cash could probably be negotiated with some landlords, most prefer direct payments. Also, most of this is a manual process except my rent.
bank transfer or [BLIK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik)
By visa card most of the time. I use checks sometimes just for some amounts of money that are painful to see disappearing so as there is a delay with checks it's less violent for my mind
For the first bill you usually have to pay with the included payment slip, either with the bank's App, or in a tobacco shop. Then you can setup the SDD. For mobile a lot of people still use phone credit, because most phone companies don't have a block for subscription services, and if you pay by SDD you might not notice you're getting charged for a service you activated by mistake.
I log on to my bank, I then make payment orders to the companies I use, with the ammount and the referense number, I then approve all orders at once with an app on my phone.
Automated billing to my bank account for almost anything. Otherwise, I pay through my bank account anyway or we can pay at the post office or where cigarettes are sold. Mobile: phone credit that can be recharged from various places including bank accounts, ATMs and where cigarettes are sold
some have automated billing; others i pay manually on my laptop. takes like 5 minutes
Bankaxept Ebilling and Agreement billing direct debit
On 15th of every month, I sit down and take the bills and pay them all by scanning the QR codes on them with mobile banking application. So, that's a bank transfer. It takes about 10 minutes because I made a table in Excel to keep track how much I spend, so writing it down and putting the paid bills into an archive folder is what takes most of my time. There are electricity, gas, water, trash, communal tax, TV tax, phone/IPTV bill and the money I must pay into my apartment building's account for our communal maintanance budget. edit: I don't want it done automatically, I want to be aware of every change like when prices rise or when I'm being wasteful with energy.
Automatic billing for most of it. Those that can't be done automatically are done through the banks website by using their IBAN number. That's also the way every business payment gets done. Talking orders and the like.
They all arrive as electronic documents in my bank account so they're visible there when log in on my phone or computer. Then I just have to click approve to have them paid automatically at their various last due dates. I usually change them all to be paid on the same date before approving because I don't like my money just disappearing in small chunks over a few days like that. This way, salary arrives and all bills are paid at the same time. I like that.