Everyone wants to issue payments fast and easily, including our clients! As a result, we regularly field inquiries about how to remit payment to us electronically and avoid the hassle of printing out checks and sending them via “snail mail.” So what are the best options to remit payments electronically? Well, the truth is that it will depend on your circumstances, and quite frankly, it will also depend on your bank.
Options:
- Issue a bill payment via your online banking portal
- This can be pretty quick, but you must log in to issue each time unless you have a fixed monthly subscription agreement with us. Alternatively, your ZümiFi account manager can set this up for you upon your request or with your approval if our access allows for that. We only recommend that in situations where you are still approving the expense or receiving automatic notification of all outgoing payments issued.
- ACH – you can initiate a fully electronic payment in your online banking portal once we provide you with our routing and account numbers. Your bank will charge you each time you initiate an ACH transaction, so there is a cost to you with this method.
- Digital Payment Network through your bank – different banks has different solutions, which we’ll start to outline below. Super fast and easy. No cost typically. No credentials are required from the recipient – use either their email address or mobile number. You still need to log into your online banking to initiate the payment unless you are on a fixed monthly subscription with us, in which case you can set it up once, like a recurring payment.
- Chase – uses Zelle but calls it Chase QuickPay with Zelle
- Bank of America – uses Zelle
- Wells Fargo – uses Zelle
- Citibank – uses Popmoney
- Capital One – uses Zelle
- Complete list of banks that use Zelle – https://www.zellepay.com/get-started
- Bill.com – if you are already using Bill.com to process your accounts payable, you can “invite” any vendor to receive electronic payments. As a result, they’ll get paid faster and don’t have to pay for an account to accept funds. All the vendor will need to do is accept the invitation and indicate the routing and account numbers from that they wish to receive funds. All of our clients on Bill.com remit their payments to us this way.
- Venmo – this Is another electronic payment platform. To work, the payer and the recipient must set up a Venmo account. Then, to issue a payment, you send the payment to the recipient’s account name. For example, our account name is @ZumiFi. The recipient will be notified that a payment has arrived and can log into Venmo to instruct those funds to be transferred into the bank account associated with the Venmo account. Another quick and easy way to pay!
The takeaway? There are several ways you can accomplish sending electronic payments. Generally, some time and effort are required to log in to set up the payment. The one major exception to that is recurring payments. Most of these systems, and certainly any online banking portal, will automatically allow you to set up a recurring payment each month. One of the many reasons we offer flat monthly subscription fees to our clients!