Was it some kind of law or banks just decided to play nice?
@10022016 wrote:When Did Credit Card Banks Start Offering Autopay?
I can't say for sure when it was, but I know it's been available for a long time now. I could (but will spare everyone) tell you a whole story about putting DirecTV on auto-pay back when that first became an option... That was in the '90s, by the way.
Well, I don't see how it's a win-win situation since if you miss a payment, they can skyrocket your interest rate.
@10022016 wrote:Well, I don't see how it's a win-win situation since if you miss a payment, they can skyrocket your interest rate.
Auto pull payments are much more in the interests of your creditors than they are you. Set up auto push payments through your bank's bill pay instead. Here is my thinking on this:
My problem with "auto pay" (which here means "allow somebody to pull money out of your bank account whenever they feel justified in doing so") is that you don't have control. If you need to adjust how much or when that payment gets pulled (or stop the payment all together) you are at the mercy of the entity wanting your money as to if you can make those adjustments and how quickly. It's in their interests to take your money whether you want them to right then or not.
There are a bunch of things that could happen that would cause you to need to make adjustments to your payment. If you are at the mercy of someone pulling money from your accounts, you have less control than you may need.
Take a few minutes to consider situations where you may not have enough money in your bank account because something happened (Payroll delays, Account frozen by a Collector with a Court Order, you had to pay cash for an emergency service, etc). My favorite example being an "auto pay" that double pulled a payment because of a computer glitch. Which caused an overdraft, which caused overdraft fees, which caused insufficient funds for other payments, which caused bounced check fees. That took a lot of time and phone calls to sort out. That is not something I intend to relive. "Auto pull" means bouncy, bouncy goes the payment.
I use my bank account's bill pay feature and set up automatic "push" payments to those that I want to "auto pay". I have better control of what, when and if payments happen. As insurance that you won't be late with credit card payments set up a recurring bill pay for your minimum monthly payment on the cards you use. You'll never be late and you just pay the balance (minus your minimum payment amount) manually as you would normally.
Also: If you don't have a Checking Line of Credit/Overdraft Protection on your checking account you really should see about getting one. It will save you from overdraft fee snowballing which is extremely expensive.
@CreditInspired wrote:Now, granted, anyone can have a hiccup, but the way I make sure this doesn't happen--I check my bank and credit card accounts every single day--no exception. No kidding!
Same here!! On my browser's bookmark toolbar, I have a folder called 'Banking' and it contains the login pages of EVERY SINGLE account I have, anything related to finances. So, for example, BofA, Amex, Credit Karma, Citi, Discover, Experian, etc. I just go through, alphabetically, the whole list every day--except for accounts that i KNOW haven't been used lately. With those, I check them about twice a week, just to verify there's still a $0 balance. I also have alerts set up on ALL my accounts, for everything from any sized purchase to payments due to payments received, so if I noticed that I HAVEN'T received an alert I should have, I know to look into it.
BTW, I filled out a survey recently about financial products, and it asked 'in the past 3 months, how many times have you' and it had choices like 'logged in using a computer,' 'logged in using a smartphone app,' and so on. Three months? *numbers crunching in my brain....* At least 90 just for laptop. At least 90 just for smartphone. Toss a few more in because it's not unusual to check an account(s) more than once in a day for some reason. So I entered '200' as my response. It wouldn't accept it!! It said the answer had to be 90 or less. 
@SoCalGardener wrote:
@CreditInspired wrote:Now, granted, anyone can have a hiccup, but the way I make sure this doesn't happen--I check my bank and credit card accounts every single day--no exception. No kidding!
Same here!!
Me too. When I was running my business every morning I sat down at the computer with my coffee and reconciled all the transactions from the day before into my accounting software. Some scumbag stole my business debit card info from a vendor and I caught the two charges they made (in grocery stores in Europe) before the transactions had even cleared. After I closed the business that habit transferred to my personal accounts.
I do not have any banking apps on my phone and I just can't see any reason to. I cannot think of any time in my life that I have thought "Gee, I'm out of the house doing something. I should check my bank account." I also hate trying to do anything complicated on a cell phone. Reading, playing simple games, looking at emails, sure. But actual research or writing anything of consequence? No.
The experience of trying to do anything "real" on a phone reminds me of trying to build a ship in a bottle: It can be done, but why would you want to other than for the challenge? I realize there are a lot of people for whom their phone is their only computer. I feel my life would be significantly less enjoyable if I was one of them.