Direct Payment benefits everyone involved: companies, banks, and most importantly, you! Some of your benefits for using Direct Payment include:

Direct Payment is simple.

• Each bill that you pay using a paper check requires you to write the check, address an envelope, find a stamp or make a trip to purchase stamps, and mail your payment.
• Direct Payments are automatic: you don't have to be in town to pay your bills. This is perfect if you travel on business or go on a vacation.
• You never have to worry about missing or forgetting payments. Mailing a payment just a few days late, or having a payment get lost in the mail, can result in late fees of as much as $30 per payment and potentially damage your credit score.

Direct Payment is safe.

• Each Direct Payment is deducted from your account on the due date each month so it is easy to track. In contrast, you never know when checks will be deducted from your account.
• Your bank protects your personal account information. You actually gain financial privacy with Direct Payment because checks pass through so many more hands.
• Your checks contain a great deal of information about you - information you do not want to give out. Most check theft occurs right at your mailbox, and using Direct Payment significantly reduces this risk.

Direct Payment is smart.

• It saves you time. Most people spend the equivalent of three days a year writing checks to pay bills.
• An average household receives 20 bills each month. As postage costs continue to rise, each household spends close to $100 a year for stamps alone. Direct Payment not only eliminates postage expense, but also the cost of checks, which can be another $30 per year, and the possibility of being charged late fees.
• Late payments affect your credit score. About 35% of the FICO® score used by banks and lenders is based on payment history, including details on both timely payments and late or missed payments. Direct Payment ensures that you will never have another late or missed payment.
• According to a 2006 consumer survey, consumers who use Direct Payment or Direct Deposit to save for education save $90 more per month than those who use another method to save, and those who were saving for reasons other than education saved $25 per month more if they saved electronically versus manually.
• Direct Payment is also good for the environment. According to Javelin Strategy & Research, if all U.S. households paid their bills electronically, it would:

• Save 18.5 million trees each year or the amount of lumber needed for 216,054 typical single-family homes.
• Save more than 15.8 billion gallons of wastewater a year, more than that generated by the city of Fresno, Calif.
• Save more than 29 trillion BTUs, more than enough energy to provide residential power to the city of Jacksonville, Florida, for one year.
• Reduce toxic air pollutants by 2.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalents, akin to having 390,326 fewer cars.
• Reduce by 1.7 billion pounds the solid waste generated in a year, equal to the raw tonnage generated by Detroit in a year's time.
• Save landfill space and curb the amount of toxic chemicals - including methane gas - released into the atmosphere as paper decomposes. A contributor to global warming, methane gas has 21 times the heat-trapping power of carbon monoxide.