If you abhor writing out cheques, putting them in drop boxes or are simply reluctant to leave the comfortable confines of your chair, internet banking is your friend.

Forming a part of internet banking services is the facility to pay bills, both routine and the not-so-routine ones. Most banks don’t charge you separately for these bill payment services too.

Variety

Payments that can be made are utility bills, telephone and mobile bills, insurance premium, mutual fund payments including SIPs, credit cards, taxes and donations to select organisations.

Registering for making online payments can either be done online with your net banking account or by filling out a form and presenting it to the bank.

All you need to do is to provide your name, account number and ATM card number (this allows you to pay through ATMs as well). Once you register for the service, you can add the billers you wish.

Note that the list of billers varies with each State, especially for electricity and gas. Your bank will put up a list of billers who can be added according to region on its Web site.

Among the more common national billers are life insurance players such as LIC and Birla Sunlife, mutual funds such as Quantum Mutual Fund and telephone payments such as Airtel or Vodafone. Also note that it isn’t necessary that the bill should be in your name.

Regular vs odd bills

There are those payments which have a regular billing cycle and where you’re presented with a bill before you can pay the amount due. Examples are post paid mobile bills, telephone bills, credit card dues and so on. For these, once you add the biller, you can make payments only from the next billing cycle and not the current one. After that payments can be made only after the bill is generated or ‘presented’ to you. Here, the physical bill from the biller will still reach you, regardless of you registering for online payments.

Then there are those payments which can be made at odd points and which don’t have a cycle. These include bills such as dish TV payments and donations. Here, you can begin payments immediately after adding the biller and at any point you wish. It may take a couple of days for your payment to be registered at the biller’s end, so don’t wait until the last possible moment to put through payments.

A way to make sure you don’t miss it is to set alerts through either SMS or e-mails which are available as an add-on with bill payment services!

Other benefits

You can leave standing instructions with your bank to make bill payment as soon as the bill is generated. This too can be done online in your net banking account. While you can do this for any biller, it is advisable to use this facility only for routine ones, and not others. You don’t want to buy that home theatre system on your credit card bill and find yourself suddenly bereft of cash because you automated credit card bill payments.

But some banks offer a loophole – you can set limits on automated payments. Any amount above this ceiling will not go through, so it warrants attention. You can, at any point, stop automatic payments on any bill, again through your net banking account. But to be on the safer side, inform your biller in writing when you stop automatic payments.

acharya@thehindu.co.in

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