The term Bill Pay became widespread for making payments to resources through banking platforms where you enter the name and address of a business or individual, and a physical check is mailed out on your behalf. You log in to the banking intuition, enter the recipient’s name and address, and the check magically appears in their mailbox 5 to 7 business days later. Bonus, local utilizies allow for instant electronic payments.  Many platforms beyond banking offer this, but which one of them has the best bill pay services for your business?

 

Why Most Banks Fail at the Bill Pay process?

Traditional checks require you to fill out the dollar amount and the individual cashes it in. Anyone old enough to deal with this process knows that many individuals and businesses sit on this check for very long periods of time, sometimes even forever. Because of that you never know what actual funds are in your checking account until it may be too late. That check or Bill Pay was finally cashed in, and at that moment, you may not have sufficient funds to cover it. 

What bank’s tech is the best?

Chase Bank is hands down the best at banking tech. Banks like US Bank are making strides in improving their tech and are sometimes a lot better in every other aspect, including customer service and mailing checks to the local bank for deposits. However, Chase Bank features the ability to send a check, ACH withdraws the amount as soon as you submit the Bill Payment to be processed.  The best part is it refunds the check value back to your checking account in the event that a check is not deposited. 

From the bookkeeper’s perspective, they are more inclined towards Chase’s coding of transactions than, say, the US Bank. But this becomes less of an issue if you utilize something like Divvy Expense Management system for handling most of your recurring credit card transactions. It also makes switching banks less of a nightmare if a third party like Divvy or Ramp are utilizing virtual credit cards to manage all your expenses and ACH withdraws all money owed for expenses once per week. 

Below is a comprehensive list of our experiences with many different banks and platforms, pointing out what each one excels or fails at. 

• Best Banking Institution Tech
  • Chase
• Most Improved Backing Institution Tech
  • US Bank
    • NOTE: Coding transactions can still be challenging for a bookkeeper compared to Chase but Divvy or Ramp alleviates most of these issues.
• Worst Tech 
  • Comerica 
• Best Customer Service 
  • Most credit unions 
• Best Brick and Mortar Coverage 
  • Chase 
    • NOTE: Chase is everywhere, but I would steer clear of it if you want a real relationship with a bank for loans and solid customer service. 
• Worst Banks 
  • Wells Fargo 
  • Bank of America 
• Best Payment Platforms 
  • Melio for domestic payment 
    • Zoho Books Payment Integration for Melio: Sync Bills, Contacts, and Invoices Automatically 
    • NOTE:  Be aware of the annual fees 
       
  • Wise for international payments 
    • Wise to Zoho Books Integration: Populate Bills and Categorize Transactions Easily 
    • The Best Way to Transfer Money to a Foreign Bank Account in 6 Steps – Network Antics 
    • NOTE: Customer Service is almost non-existent. 
• Additional Payment Platform Competitors 
  • Bill.com 
• Expense Platforms 
  • Divvy (Now owned by Bill.com) 
  • Ramp 

 

How to receive great Bill Pay features without banking at Chase?

Use Zelle, Venmo, or PayPal if you are simply making payments to individuals. Definitely explore Melio and Wise for the best bill pay services in a business payment platform. The first is for the domestic audience and the other is for international payments. DolarApp is cheaper but this is used for more one-off individual situations when it comes to international payment. Latin America is dominated by performing transfers with your CLABE; and obviously it varies in each country, but the predominant players are Wise and Melio for domestic use.   Also, Mercado Pago is trending hard for merchant and as a general payment platform.

 

The 5 Best Bill Pay services: Most Useful Banking and Payment Platforms Summary

Among the banks tested, Chase stands out for high visibility, offering physical locations, a very robust web interface, the ability to cancel checks, and automatic refunds. Despite all that, those perks don’t come without their own set of problems. Customer service with Chase is atrocious, and while you may think that is something you’re willing to accept, you’ll change your mind when you come around to needing it. 

Solutions like Ramp, Divvy, Zelle, Melio, and Wise help break free of the beast known as Chase. US Bank has made great improvements to their tech over the years, but it ultimately takes a back seat if services like Wise and Melio are in your life for ACH payments. The conversation is simply a non-starter for other banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America because they’re always in the news for bad behavior and anti-consumer practices.  

The challenge then becomes how do you integrate these payment platforms and the best bill pay services with your books? Thankfully, there are easy ways to get everything up and running at maximum efficiency. Check out our Zoho Books API integration to get a better understanding of how it works and just how beneficial it can be. We even have a Zoho Books integration with Melio and another integration with Wise.