BoA BillPay with CC

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:
Update:  From what I can tell, you can only use your BoA CC as a BillPay funding source to pay other credit cards.  And not all CC's at that.  PenFed, Chase, NFCU, CapOne, Discover all show it as available source.  Alliant, Juni Biz, CareCredit do not.  My electric and utilities do not.

---

Thanks for the clarification. I was wondering. Based on what I have set up in there my BofA CC is not available as a funding source for anything. Must be some kind of code on the payee side.

---

It may also be dependant on:

1.  What type of BoA card you have.  I do not recll ever noticing my CC as a BillPay souce prior to PC'ing to a BancAmericard Reward Visa.  Possibly only certain CC's qualify.

2.  It may depend on the "customer type" with BoA.  I am a Premiere Banking client which does provide some options and amenities that I did not have prior to being Premiere.

3.  It could be a combination of the two above mentioned.  And again, this is speculation and theorizing....I have nothing concrete to base this upon other than not noticing the option prior to recently PC'ing to Reward Visa from Platinum Plus Visa (non-reward).

[Anonymous]

As nice as BofA's Bill Pay seems to be, I haven't fooled with it much. I don't pay very many bills that way. In fact the only bill that I have that I routinely pay that was is my Citi CC, which gets paid off of Wachovia's bill pay. I use ebill for my BofA CC and ebill is tied in with bill pay somehow. One day when I am so inclined I will look at it some more.

[Anonymous]

BoA BillPay also allows you to pay from other bank accounts also.  So, you set up Wachovia, Chase or whatever bank acct you want to use, they send a "verification" deposit to that account.  Once you verify the deposits, BoA allows you to initiate a BillPay through BoA, but funded by an account from another Bank.

Here is the info from Pay to/Pay from page:

What is a Pay From Account?

• A Pay From account is an account that you make payments from. You can use a Bank of America checking, money market, credit card or Home Equity Line of Credit account to fund payments. You can also link to a checking or money market account at another bank.

What else can I do?

• Before you can use an account from another bank to make bill payments, we will need to verify that account. You'll be prompted to do this automatically. Please allow 2-3 business days for account verification.

BoA also lets me send direct wire transfers to/from BoA and outside banks as well.  The more I look around, the more I like the online options they have.

Message Edited by txjohn on 07-26-2009 11:29 AM

Message Edited by txjohn on 07-26-2009 11:30 AM

[Anonymous]

My only BOA deposit account is the barebones online checking account, which I opened just a couple of months ago in response to a BOA promotion: open this account, fund it with a $125 ACH transfer & we'll pay you $75 after 60 days.

My BOA credit cards are a Visa Signature & a WorldPoints MasterCard. Both cards were originally issued by MBNA back in the mid-90s & were reissued as BOA cards when BOA acquired MBNA. The Visa card used to be an L.L. Bean co-branded card but was reissued as a Signature card after L.L. Bean broke off its partnership with BOA last year.

BOA also holds our mortgage, but accessing this online requires a separate login; the mortgage apparently isn't linked to the checking or CC accounts.

Incidentally, I just added the mortgage to BillPay as a payee & noticed that both of our CCs show up as funding sources. Using credit cards to pay our mortgage - that's scary!

[Anonymous]

Very interesting Jim.

Let us know if you actually use a CC for BillPay....I'll do the same.  At this point it is shear morbid curiousity for me

[Anonymous]

And I as well.

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Now, would this invite AA on the part of BoA?  That is the question to ask.  Is it like offering you to "skip a payment" and then AA if you do?  Would they view the use of CC as a BillPay souce in any negative way? 

---

Hmm. Good question. I suspect that BOA hopes that after using one of their CCs as a funding source to pay your bills, you'll then fail to PIF their card, in which case they (BOA) will earn some extra interest income.

Suppose, for example, that you use your BOA Visa to PIF your Discover card. Then, for whatever reason, you don't PIF your BOA Visa. If that happens, you've effectively transferred your Discover balance to your BOA card - except that you don't get the promotional APR that you'd get if you'd done a conventional BT. That's bad for you but good for BOA.

Assuming that you're disciplined enough to always PIF your BOA card, the only downside that I can see is that your utilization will stay higher for a longer time. Assume, for example, that your latest Discover statement shows a balance of $1000 with payment due on 8/15. Normally, you'd ACH that amount to Discover on 8/15 from your checking account. Instead, you use your BOA Visa to pay that $1000 to Discover. So now that $1000 balance will continue to report until you PIF your BOA Visa, which may not happen until, say, 9/25. That might lower your scores by a few points.

A good, low-risk test might be to use my BOA Visa to pay my Alliant Visa. My latest Alliant statement shows a balance of $6.65, with payment due on 8/8. Since there's not much money at issue here, I'll pay this from my BOA Visa & see what happens. 

---

Oh -- what a tangled web we weave..........  I'd be lost!! 

Come to think about it, I AM lost! 

D-R

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:
Update:  From what I can tell, you can only use your BoA CC as a BillPay funding source to pay other credit cards.  And not all CC's at that.  PenFed, Chase, NFCU, CapOne, Discover all show it as available source.  Alliant, Juni Biz, CareCredit do not.  My electric and utilities do not.

---

I can pay my utilities this way - and have - electric, gas, and water, and quite a number of my cc's.  I don't do it often, since there are no rewards to it, but there have been months where the budget has been squeezed and I didn't want to tap savings.  It can be a useful tool for a temporary float.

ETA:  I live in a major city, so many local providers are listed for me.  If you wish to have a provider listed, you can hit the "suggestion link" at the bottom of the "add a merchant" section.  Don't know how quickly they respond, or if they wait for a certain number of requests before they add a new merchant.

Message Edited by ma_fico on 07-28-2009 10:30 AM

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Very interesting Jim.

Let us know if you actually use a CC for BillPay....I'll do the same.  At this point it is shear morbid curiousity for me 

---

On Sunday, I logged into Bill Pay & used my BOA MC to pay my wife's Costco Amex. Today, I logged in & saw...nothing, apart from an error message letting me know that none of my BOA accounts is eligible for Bill Pay.

So I called customer service & was transferred twice before speaking to a rep on the systems side, who investigated & reported that the Bill Pay screens that I had seen before today were actually left over from the old Bill Pay Choice system that BOA had inherited from MBNA. Between Sunday & today, BOA pulled the plug on the old system, thereby deleting any customer profiles associated with it. So I would have to create a new profile, which entailed re-entering my payees as well as any non-BOA pay-from accounts associated with the old profile.

(I'm a little ashamed of myself for not figuring this out. I've worked in IT for large banks for many years, & I should have noticed that the layout of the Bill Pay screens that I had seen before today didn't conform to the latest BOA standards.)

Anyway, all payments initiated but not yet completed under the old system would go through as scheduled, I was assured. I'll check my wife's Amex account tomorrow; if I don't see a credit, I'll pay it from another deposit account, just to be safe.

When I set up payees under my new profile, I noticed that payment from my credit cards isn't allowed for some of them - notably my BOA mortgage. That makes sense. 

 

 

[Anonymous]

I initiated a BillPay to another CC (PenFed) for a remaining balance that popped up for a recent charge.  It claims it will be "delivered by" tomorrow.  So this was my test to see what happens.

So far I do not have any option of BIllPay from CC to non-CC payments....and not all CC payees provide the option.  PenFed, CapOne, Chase, NFCU & Discover all show it as an option.  Alliant and CareCredit do not.

I really just want to see if it is really treated as a purchase.  The BillPay shows the scheduled payment for tomorrow...so it won't be long till I know if it works.