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Comment by fireworks10 | Hacker News Reader

Most major banks offer a service called 'bill pay' which does this for free, directly from your checking account. Your bank first tries to pay the receiver electronically if they are in the banks network (most utility or other major companies would likely be in-network), and if they aren't in network or if they are just a person and not a company, then the service sends them a physical check in the mail.

[1]https://www.bankofamerica.com/onlinebanking/online-bill-pay....

[2]https://www.chase.com/online-banking/online-bill-pay

[3]https://www.wellsfargo.com/online-banking/bill-pay/

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Is this a thing? In every country I've lived in, cheques are not only universally hated by landlords and tenants, but all banks offer recurring payments available online (no matter whether the payee is "in the network", you just need the account number and some other piece of data depending on the country). My rent has been paid automatically ever since I was old enough to have a rent, and I never paid a cent for the service of "paying my rent".

I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure the service is great... what is making me laugh is the fact that it's even needed. And by "making me laugh" I mean "horrifies me".

Have you lived in the USA? Checks are, as far as I can tell, still ubiquitous for rent payments here, and I've always used my bank's online bill pay feature for that. The same is true for utilities, although recently more of those have started supporting recurring credit card payments online.

To people in Europe (no idea if grandparent belongs to these), mailing around checks is just a ludicruous idea.

You whip out your strong-authentication-of-the-day device, do the magic bellydance (i.e., enter some numbers into that device, or scan something on the screen) and whoop, you just transfered a sum of money. To someone in a different European (SEPA) country. Without paying anything (except if you live in Italy and have a greedy bank). With the money coming in within two business days at their side.

And of course you have an option to perform monthly payments that way. Some landlords put it in the rent contract that the tenant has to use this method.

France was one of the last country to abandon checks. Why? Because everything is more efficient when it's electronic, and there is less forgery. (You can still send a wire transform via mail with a forged signature, but with these, you can usually go to the recipient and give them a hard time, which is harder with a check someone cashed out two days ago).

I have indeed lived in europe and what sounds ludicrous to me is that people not only have to deal with this but accept it as the norm. What the hell do landlords get out of this? The joy of having to run to the bank every xth of the month?

I don't know about you but my bank is more like a public toilet than a bakery. I wouldn't go there unless there was an emergency, and even if there was I'd consider a dark alley over it.

(brought to you by the Department of drawn out metaphors)

I have never heard of a landlord in the US that does not accept checks. Many only accept checks (or probably cash if you offered it), particularly non-corporate landlords.

My current (corporate) landlord accepts checks or direct deposit, but not credit or debit.

It really feels like a company injecting themselves into a workflow where there are already totally usable alternatives. Plus they get themselves a handy pool of potential clients of all the landlords they send checks to.

Check is the standard method of paying rent in the US. Many apartments are getting onboard with online rent payments, but it's still not really standard. My last apartment was check-only. My current apartment complex has online payment, but there's a ton of surcharges (payment collection fee, convenience fee, etc.) adding up to about $50 if you pay online.

Hilarious. Payment collection fee for ... something that is easier and doesn't require collection? Than a cheque, which does require both collection and deposit, and isn't immediate, and, and ...

This sounds even more pathetic than those sad businesses having "handling fee" surcharges for getting your bills online. As if there was actually a secretary typing all those numbers into excel and uploading them to the website manually.

My god do I hate artificial difficulty.

I'm 40, have always lived in the US, and have never paid my rent in a way other than check. To take it even farther, I'm pretty sure I've written fewer than 100 checks in my entire life that weren't rent checks.

They allow electronic payments for my apartment, but honestly in the US, that's very rare. Here, a check is the most acceptable way to pay for their mortgage/rent. Many people prefer it due a) A lack of an existing process to accept them (haven't setup through their bank yet) and b) A prevailing distrust of computers and the internet in general.

There are erroneous deductions that can happen if you don't keep an eye on automatic payments and there are horror stories of overbillings, overdrafts etc... so that scares away some people too.

I love this kind of service - it allows me to pay my bills relatively automatically without giving the payee any of my banking information[1]. The fact that the paper check is a common interface makes this very easy (from my perspective). Just fill in a few fields and the bank (and the business I am paying) take care of the rest.

It's a push model for paying, vs a pull (where you set up auto-deduct).

[1] ok, yeah, it's right there on the check, but I get to sign off on the exact amount of the transaction.

We're working on the ability to use your successful rent payments to contribute to your credit score, which is a huge benefit for folks like me who have no established credit in the US (or bad credit).

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