Comments on: Pay Another Person Electronically for Free

By: Ted

Ted — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:13:23 +0000

A friend of mine in another state recently needed money due to an emergency. After discussing various ways to get her money fast (wire, fedex, etc), I discovered she had a checking account with a bank that had a local branch. I went and got the cash out of my account and made a deposit directly to hers. It was done the same morning.

By: calgeek

calgeek — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:41:39 +0000

I used Bank of America billpay to pay an individual direct to their account by registering them as a business payee with an account number. I used his bank address as the business address and his checking account number as the billing account number. I tried this first with a small test deposit, and it worked no problem.

Yes, it's too bad that banks don't offer a deposit-only account number or disposable virtual account numbers (like some credit cards).

By: TFB

TFB — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:26:34 +0000

simplesimon - Theoretically thieves can print checks with those numbers and pass those checks to stores, as in the movie Catch Me If You Can. How much risk is there? I don't know. Those numbers are printed on the bottom of our checks. Whether it's a real risk or not, the perception of risk makes people hesitant to give out those numbers. At least people want to avoid the hassle of reporting unauthorized debits, closing an account, opening a new one and setting up bill pay again. People will feel more comfortable if the account can only be paid into, but not debited without authorization. PayPal does a good job at that. Anybody can pay into my PayPal account with only the equivalent of an account number, but nobody can take money out of it without my approval. Businesses have whitelists for electronic debits on their bank accounts. Incoming debits can be automatically rejected unless the other party is pre-authorized on the whitelist. If consumers can have the same feature and get an alert when a debit comes in from a party not on the whitelist, giving out the account number and routing number will be less of a problem. NetBanker reported one bank in Michigan offered this kind of service to retail customers for $4/month: Has Mercantile Bank cracked the code for generating online banking fees?

By: simplesimon

simplesimon — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:08:20 +0000

I use ING Direct's Electric Orange. I've only paid people two times with it. Once to pay my dad (who trusted me with his checking and routing numbers), and another time to a coworker who gave me his physical address so that ING can cut him a check (they mail it for free).

I think the former is the best way to do this. I guess the question is how safe is it to give out checking account and routing numbers? What can somebody do with just these two pieces of information? How can they make it less risky to give out this information?

By: Modder

Modder — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:58:34 +0000

In Europe, direct electronic money transfers have been free and widely used for decades…