Need another reason to start paying bills online?

By: Christopher Forestieri

Online banking and bill paying has been around for a while. Most banks and credit unions offer their members ways to handle virtually all their finance without ever actually stepping foot inside one of their branches. And, to the delight of environmentalists, they also offer their members the ability to manage their finance and bills without a single scrap of paper.

Paper checks, account receipts and needlessly long statement printouts, once commonplace in most American homes, have been slowly relegated to relics of banking past. This not only eliminates a large amount of waste but also saves money.

I was once employed by a Credit Union in Kalamazoo, Michigan. They were very insistent that we tellers, “push the online banking.” While they acknowledged their ecological responsibility, they also were quick to point out the amount of money they would save themselves.

For example, something as simple as eliminating paper statements saved them as much as $5.00 per account. This may not seem like much, but when you think about tens of thousands of accounts, or in the case of many large banks Millions of accounts, that can amount to a lot of money—and paper too. This is helpful to the environmental movement in that companies are finding that eco friendly choices are also savings friendly choices.

One bank is now taking the idea a step further. Charter One Bank is offering members 10 cents every time they “pay without paper.” According to a release from Charter One, “we'll pay you 10 cents every time you pay without paper - like when you use your debit card, pay a bill online, or have an automatic payment charged to your checking account or debit card. You can earn up to $120 a year!”

There is really no reason to not use online banking assuming you have access to a computer with an internet connection and understand how to use it. Aside from the money saving incentive from financial institutions such as Charter One, there is also savings from eliminating stamps as well as the convenience of being able to manage all your bills in the same way. In short, online banking saves time, money and a whole lot of paper.