For online payments, is it better to do it through my bank instead of using the payee's online payment system?

I use my bank’s ez pay system. It’s worked great for me for years.

In the past our company ran into a problem with a credit card processing vendor who initiated a BS withdrawal from our bank (we returned their equipment, they claimed they didn’t get it—total scam). We happened to catch the charge and fight it within the 24-hour period, but there was a very narrow time window to pull that off, otherwise we would have had to sue in court to get our money back. Ever since, we’ve made sure all of our payments are “pushed” to the vendor from our bank instead of being “pulled” from the vendor side.

You can set up auto-payments on the bank’s side if it’s the same amount every month. Also, some vendors support e-billing that allows them to submit a bill to your bank and the bank will pay the amount submitted if you set that up.

Really, it’s personal preference.

I tend to pay directly (that is, go to the store’s website instead of using my bank’s Bill Pay mechanism), because using Bill Pay introduces another actor in the process, and that’s another place where things can break down or get mishandled.

Let’s say I pay 12 bills a month. My guess is that ten of them I pay directly on their site, and two of them I use bank bill pay. (and one of those is my county water bill, and that’s because the water company charges me a surcharge for paying online with them).

Safety and security – it’s a wash either direction. I wouldn’t worry about that with either approach. There are lots of other things to worry about. LIke, if the bill is paid late, who eats the late charge?

Depends on if you are on a secure system or not.

Since I am, I pay directly to the site, which is much easier and faster imo. But that’s only three bills a month- mortgage, utilities and water.

I’m very happy using my bank’s online bill pay for everything and have never had a problem with it.

I have always paid all bills using my bank auto pay feature.
But if travelling check online once in a while to make sure all OK.
Otherwise have a great time knowing that your bank will take care of problems while you are away.( inform Bank of travel and times).

Usually the payment shows received a day faster if I use the payee’s site. So if it’s the due date or close, I do that.

Using the bank’s site, you have a good point about not sharing you account information. The payees don’t see that.

Another advantage of using only the bank site is ease of record keeping. All your records are one place, stored consistently, when you want them for taxes or any other place.

I paid through the payee’s site for many, many years & I never had a problem. Once my tiny local bank was bought out by a larger bank, I decided to change over to having the bank pay them. I feel my info is safer with my bank & I can set it up for automatic payout every month so I NO longer have to remember to pay my bills nor worry that my payment will be late. Some of the sites I used to pay to have been hacked since then & people had all kinds of problems from it. Guess I was just lucky!!!