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Bank of America Online BankingLike most big banks, Bank of America offer online banking options for its customers. What kind of things can you do at the BofA website? You can view your monthly bank statement online, seeing line by line summaries of all activity in your checking and savings accounts. You can also see images of all your cancelled checks - no need to receive or save all those old envelopes full of checks as in the past. Bank of America Bill Pay makes it easy to pay all your bills online as well, and save yourself time and stamps each month instead of writing out individual checks and mailing them the old way. You can set up recurring payments to happen automatically, like car payments or mortgage or rent payments. You can set up bill payments in advance, knowing they will be processed the day you want them to go through. This kind of power and flexibility makes it a no brainer to switch over to online banking. Below, we cover some of the other features Bank of America offers, and how to get your account configured for online banking.
Receiving Bills OnlineA lot of companies now send "ebills" to their customers who use online banking. Instead of getting a monthly statement in the mail, you will get an email from your bank notifying you when you receive a new ebill that needs to be paid. The list of companies offering ebills through Bank of America is huge - water and electric companies, gas companies, insurance companies, stores, newspapers, with more being added each month. You can check and see which of your bills you can switch over to ebills, then no longer worry about misplacing an envelope in the mail or forgetting to make a payment. Even if you can't get an ebill, you can still pay ANY bill online electronically, and pay an unlimited number of them each month with Bank of America Bill Pay service. You can enter the name, address, and account numbers for anyone you want to pay regularly (or even irregularly) online -- for example, pre-schools, dentists, garbage company, yard service, cable company, cell phone company, etc. When you receive your bill in the mail from these people, log onto BankOfAmerica.com and select them from your list of payees, enter the amount you want to pay, and then Bank of America either sends your payment electronically to them (if they are connected to receive electronic payments) or BofA prints and mails a standard printed check. Either way it happens, you can easily pay 10 or 12 bills online in a matter of minutes, with no stamps, no check writing, no licking envelopes. Most people who try this service never change back to the old manual check payment system.Setting up a Bank of America online accountHow can I use Bank of America online checking and banking? Setting up your online account is simple. First, or course, you must be a customer of BofA and have an open account there. If not, go into a branch office and set one up. You can even open up a new account online here. MyAccess Checking is their most popular type of account, which is free and requires no minimum balance as long as you have direct deposit of your paychecks into the account each month. There is also the Prima, CampusEdge, and Standard checking accounts that have certain balance and other requirements relating to monthly fee amounts. BofA is running a special that gives you $50 when you open an online account right now - worth checking out! Anyways, once you have your account number, you will also need your Social Security number, your BofA ATM of check card number and PIN, and email address. You will setup an online login and password to access your account, and from then on you will be ready to go anytime. Just login to the site, check your balances, check your latest transactions, pay bills, all at no charge. We've been happy Bank of America customers for over a decade, and adding online banking has just made our experience with them better and better.Benefits of using Bank of America online bankingThere are a lot of good reasons to use Bank of America online checking and banking, but here are some of the most important ones to us:
Is online banking safe?This is probably the most common question we hear, especially from people over the age of 40 who have not grown up using computers and the internet. Bank of America makes it especially easy, with their $0 liability program: "With our Online Banking service, you can be confident that your Bank of America accounts will be secure and protected. Our safe Internet banking measures guarantee $0 liability for any unauthorized activity originating from Online Banking, including Bill Payment." They use SSL (secure socket layers) for encrypted communications between your computer and their servers - anyone intercepting data will not be able to read or do anything with it. They also guarantee to make all payments ontime, and will pay any late fees you might be charged for a late payment due to their fault. You need to check your monthly statements and inform them of any irregular activites - if you tell them within 60 days of any unauthorized transfer or transactions, they will reimburse you in full. You also have to protect your online ID and password - if you give anyone that information and they make transactions, you will not be compensated for that loss. You must also logout of any online banking sessions when complete, and not leave your computer or any computer you are using connected to your account.In general, you should also do a few other things to protect yourself and your online financial accounts:
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