Credit card autopay allows cardholders to set up recurring, automatic payments for their credit card accounts. You can use this function to make recurring payments on a specific day each month, such as your credit card’s monthly due date. You can also pick the amount you’d like to autopay. Most card issuers give options to automatically pay the … read full answerminimum amount due, full statement balance, or a custom amount.
You’ll typically be able to set up your credit card autopay feature wherever you make online credit card payments. Simply log in with your credentials, navigate to the payment section, and look for “autopay” or “set up automatic payments.” If your card issuer has a mobile app, you should be able to set up automatic payments on the app, as well. Payments made with autopay will be funded from whichever payment account you have entered to pay the credit card. Usually, your bank account and routing numbers will be required to make an automatic payment.
All major credit card companies have credit card autopay options. Automatic payments make it easy to never miss a due date, which means avoiding costly late fees. If you choose to pay your full statement balance automatically, you’ll avoid interest charges on purchases, too – as long as you have enough money in the account you’re paying the bill from.
On that note, not having enough money to complete a scheduled automatic payment leads to one of the potential downsides of using credit card autopay: penalty fees. If your account doesn’t have enough money to fund the automatic payment, you will either overdraft your bank account or miss a credit card payment – both of which could result in high penalty fees. Even if your credit card doesn’t charge late fees, you’ll end up having to pay finance charges on the amount past due. To avoid this, make sure you have enough money in the payment account to fund your payment every month.
Another downside to credit card autopay is that you might forget to review your monthly statement. If your automatic payment goes through before you review your statement, you could unknowingly pay for a fraudulent charge or an error. But you can overcome this downside by making a habit out of reviewing your recent transactions. All major credit cards offer $0 liability guarantees for unauthorized purchases, anyway. You just have to point out any suspicious charges the credit card company doesn’t flag on its own within a reasonable amount of time.
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