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Comment by Sesse__ | Hacker News Reader

Wait, you need to go to a website to pay your electric bill? Mine is auto-deducted from my bank (up to a certain monthly maximum that I have set myself). You get bills directly in your bank, and then approve (possibly allowing auto-deduction for future cases) or modify or ignore them as you see fit.

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One would figure you'd set up this autopay through the utility provider's website.

Many banks let you set this up directly with them - through their own site - via partner integrations with utility providers.

Uh, why? Why would I need to go through a different procedure between each entity I want to pay? After all, the point of a bank is to make unified transfer procedures between entities.

I bet a shiny nickel that you live in a place where the liability for a mistake in this procedure is between the bank and the utility company, not on you.

Over in the USA, setting up a bill autopay for a variable amount generally involves a credit card intermediary with a 2-4% rake or a lot of risk to you.

People in the USA need to lobby for better and modern banking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit#United_Kingdom

Not only does it not cost anything to the payer, the "Direct Debit Guarantee" also protects the payer from mistakes and fraud.

This isn't a new system, it's over 50 years old.

Paying bills shouldn't be a risky or expensive thing to do.

It's only if you don't set up autopay, but you usually have to go to the website for the first time at least to set up the autopay.

Username checks out. :-)

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