How To Prevent Complex Bill Pay

If you’ve ever had to replace a credit card, you know it’s a huge hassle when it comes to paying bills.

Automated bill pay should make things easy, and it usually does . . . until you need to change your payment information.

Once you get your new card in hand, you now have to update your Netflix, internet bill, and any subscription service you may have. Get ready to remember every single password you’ve ever created to login into online accounts, call service providers, and rush to find out what payments are now overdue. It’s a complicated and tedious process.

The danger is that one of these accounts could slip through the cracks during this process. When left unpaid for too long, even a small payment can incur late fees and eventually be sent to collections. Once it’s there, a late payment will negatively affect your credit score.

Unfortunately, this story is not uncommon. A card itself could be lost, damaged, or stolen when you least expect it. You may even experience credit card fraud, which has been on the rise in the past few years. Regardless, replacing or changing a card is likely to happen fairly often.

The same process can become even more complex if you are changing your name, which happens more often than you think.

For the 80% of women who change their name when they get married, this is a big concern. Not only will they need to change their name on their birth certificate, but on every credit card and bank account they own. In fact, this process can be so tricky that if not handled correctly, it could even delay a paycheck being received through direct deposit, resulting in even more financial stress.

Online bill pay should make things easier, not harder.

Setting up automatic payments can simplify your daily financial tasks, and prevent missed or late payments on bills. But, when you change your card, online auto-pay options just feel annoying.

To make things easier when you need to change your credit card or your name, we have two solutions. With two simple changes, you can make your daily finance management easier and avoid stress when changing cards.

1. Have a separate card just for bills.

Using a separate card just for paying bills can help ease some of this pain. In this article on Nerdwallet, author Victoria McGuire explains why she now keeps a separate card for bill pay after having had her cards stolen, twice! As she mentions in the article, credit card info can still be compromised, but keeping a separate card at home under lock-and-key helps reduce the risk.

Not only this, but keeping a separate card for bill payments can make tracking your expenses much easier. With one card for bills, and another card for everything else, it is easier to see exactly where your money is going.

2. Pay all your bills in once place.

A separate card will streamline your budgeting and reduce your risk for fraud, but consolidating payments takes this a step further. If you suddenly need to change your card, it makes things incredibly easy. Instead of updating your payment info on 10 or more different websites, you would just update your payment info for one.

You can get free bill consolidation with OnePay, and the added ease of paying bills on the same day each month. OnePay pays all your bills for you, you can pay for every single bill payment in one click, through one account. This completely eliminates the need to call your gym, car insurance, and landlord when you change your card. You would just login to your OnePay account, and take care of all your bill payments in one place. Whether you lose your credit card or change your name, consolidating your monthly bills will make this easier to manage.

With both a separate card kept safe, and consolidated bill pay, you can avoid the hassle that comes with replacing a card. Better yet, you can enjoy easy bill paying every month, no matter what.