Thread: Be very careful paying Discover electronically with lead times

I pay the vast majority of my bills each month with Bank of America's "BillPay" service. It works wonderfully and with no issues except for paying Discover. For whatever reason when paying Discover from my Bank of America checking account, Bof A issues something called an electronic check which seems to take a few days longer to get to Discover or get posted than with any other credit card. In one case Discover even misposted a payment to a wrong account ( not sure how that happened when all the data was correct and posting the month before and month after with exact same info worked).
I'm not sure which side of the transaction (B of A or Discover) causes the delay but like I said this is only happening on Discover and not on my Citi, Chase, or Amex payments.

Yes of course all banks issue a disclaimer about paying with sufficient lead times to allow for proper posting. In my case Discover seems to be the only one who really needs it.

I've never used my bank's bill pay service to pay my cards. I've used my card's website to pull money from my bank account, which has always worked well.

Is there a reason you prefer to use bill pay rather than to use your card issuer's website to make a payment from your bank account?

It is easier, much more convenient and certainly more efficient to log into one website and pay all the bills taht can be paid online out of the checking account rather than go to multiple independent sites of each separate credit card. Paying bills this way works exceptionally well too, except with payments to DiscoverCard.

I pay all my bills through the mail. I have a TD bank checking account I pay my Visa credit card, American express and Discover.
the Visa and American express are done electronically, Discover comes back as a copied check on the statement.

the banks take care of this.

More than likely, Bank of America doesn't have a system setup to electronically pay Discover. As a result, the payment to Discover gets thrown into the mail and mailed to their regular payment address. This is all seamless to you, but is the reason why they advise you to use longer lead times (as this can happen at any time and you won't know about it).

Who is to blame? Hard to say. It could be a technical limitation or political issue on either side of the fence.

I always play it safe and use the bank of my issuing card's website to do any electronic payments. That way they are the ones responsible for any issues. Otherwise, you end up in this he said she said mess that leaves you holding the bag.

I was a little puzzled by the 'electronic check'. I see the poster above answered the question. My bank used to issue a 'real check' to the (small regional) bank that held my car note, also my landlord gets a real check from my bank's electronic bill pay service. The delivery time should show differently in your payee listing, 4 days instead of two. I wonder if they all use the same service in Oklahoma City, where my bank said they where mailed from because of its central location. I have always pushed from my brick and mortar, those two and one insurance company payment are all that have been delivered this way. Maybe BoA is different but all my new payee's first payment's are set on a four day minimum, after one successful delivery electronicly it then drops to a two day maximum.