Automated almost all my bill payments to use my rewards card. I set up alerts on my online banking site so I get texted when each one clears. Saves me a couple hours of grumpy time each month, plus I get a substantial 1% cash back that ends up being about $200/year. Also, you can dispute charges on a credit card if they get it wrong. Can't do that with bill payment service.
My gas company and electric company are subsidiaries of the same company, and they use identical (read: equally terrible) websites with the same payment gateway. One of them lets me use a credit card and the other makes me pay from a bank account. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That's barbaric!
But I guess it's understandable. Credit card companies and ISPs charge your landlord for providing their services, so he passes on the convenience costs to you rather than the people who have more time than money, and can shove an envelope fill of cash under his door.
No coding. I'm just one of the lucky people who has almost all forward-thinking billers who support auto-pay with a credit card. There's one exception that only allows using a bank account for auto-pay, so I pay that manually through my bank's bill pay service. I've stopped giving out my 20+ year old bank account number to any service provider, because it's no fun to close an account for fraud.
The text message alert is set up on the online banking site - I set it up to send a text message whenever there's a debit >$1. There are a few banks (Chase is one) that even offer real-time alerts where you get texted as soon as the transaction happens, but most will send the alerts at some time of the day. It's a shame that more banks don't implement and advertise that feature to prevent fraud. To me it's comforting to get a text as soon as the card gets swiped.
