SIS, I don't think you understood the OP.

I'm saying that when you make a payment INTO MBNA, to PAY OFF that card, you can set a date (in advance) for a Saturday payment date.

I'm in complete agreement with you on the functionality of MBNA billpay and the best-practice strategy that results. That just isn't the issue taken up in THIS thread.

LH2004 said:DaveHanson said:I'm saying that when you make a payment INTO MBNA, to PAY OFF that card, you can set a date (in advance) for a Saturday payment date.OK, then, by any chance, can anyone say if the same is true for payments to third parties charged to your bank account? My MBNA credit limits are fully spoken for at the moment, and it would be nice if I could, say, have MBNA pay Citi on a Saturday, and not charge my bank account until Monday.
MBNA Billpay allows you to pay your MBNA card on Saturday and Sunday. It does not allow you to specify any other merchant for weekend payments. Just try making a payment to a non-MBNA account, you'll see that the weekends are greyed out on the little calendar that appears next to the payment date box.

Incidentally, whether you schedule a payment to your MBNA account for Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, it will be deducted from your checking account on Monday. Payments scheduled for Sunday won't show up on your account until late Monday night. They will show a posting date of Monday and a transaction date of Sunday. It appears that MBNA treats them as having been made on Sunday.

The payment scheduling deadlines are also different. To make a regular payment to your MBNA card, you must schedule it by 5:00 p.m. ET the previous calendar day. To make a payment to a non-MBNA account, you must schedule by 1:00 p.m. the previous business day. For a $12.95 fee, same-day express payments are available to MBNA by 5:00 p.m. the same day. ($12.95 is less than the $39 late payment fee.)

Thanks for the details, frootmall. Is it your understanding that the Sat/Sunday payments are a recent change, or has this been going on for some time (and I just didn't notice)?


SUCKISSTAPLES said:Dave I understood the post, and was just making a somewhat related point, about people who are not scheduling billpays in what I consider a "safe zone", taking them too far to the edge (trying to pay bills as close to due date as possible, relying on billpay "guarantees").As I say, I'm in complete agreement with you on billpays OUT. But you said above, Just set to pay them all right after MBNA statement close for maximum free float.That statement is ONLY true for billpays OUT, not billpays in...which is why I interpreted your comment the way I did. There have been quite a few reports of billpay system delays, which can be a mess to unravel , even IF the billpay service agrees to reimburse all late fees, interest, etc.Agreed as per billpays OUT. But has there EVER been a report of a problem with a billpay/online payment IN causing such problems, with ANY issuer, providing that it is SCHEDULED in a timely fashion, from a proper funding source? Not that I recall...

The only one I can think of is if the bank account or other payment source has NSF problems or related...that can certainly be an issue. But if a payment is due September 1, and I schedule it Aug 15 at MBNA's website to pull on 9/1, and my funds are good, and I get my confirmation number proving that I've scheduled the payment, my risk is zero...just as if I had scheduled it Aug 15 for Aug 16. Related to this topic, my point is dont try to cut the payment to MBNA too close. If the MBNA payment is due on Sat or Sun, play it safe and have it paid by say Thursday or Friday, EVEN IF MBNA allows it and it gets you free float till Monday.While different from your above point, this is indeed on topic. The question is why it's needed for a margin of safety... All it takes is one erreoneously late billpay to cause the whole 0% house of cards to fall.Very true. That's why safety should always come before goosing profits. But taken to its extreme, that would of course mean that one wouldn't use the a float from billpays at all. It's always a tradeoff. I havent done the calcs, but does the float till Monday (vs. Friday) exceed the Chipotle Factor, even on a large CL account?Well, for example, I get 6.17% on my savings (USAA money market) It's higher if it's a HELOC offset, but we'll use that for an example. That's about .02% per day return. One of my MBNA lines is $40K. So, by paying online Saturday instead of Friday (for example), I get

.02% return per day x 3 days x $40,000 line size = $24 in extra float.

And that's at ZERO risk (provided it's scheduled in advance, etc. as per above). In your specific case, I don't understand why someone who's willing to risk going above 90% utilization on his lines--a FAR riskier practice than scheduling a MBNA payment IN for the due date--would leave this money "on the table"?


A related point: one should normally never let their MBNA billpays cross a billing cycle. Instead, have the balance paid off on the cycle closing date. That way, they don't report as utilization. One happy consequence is an additional margin of safety. Suppose I screw up a billpay, and don't schedule it "on time" (e.g. the cycle close date). I still have until the due date on the NEXT billing cycle to make it right. The only harm done is that I don't have a 0% utilization reporting to the credit bureaus that month.

On a $40k balance account that would exceed Chipotle Factor , making it harder to leave on the table. But for most people not paying $40k balances each month, it might be maybe $3-4.

I seem to recall reading a post about a billpay IN , paying a CCs own bill, that for some reason happened late, and there was resulting hassle (though the CC issuer did eat all the fees)...

I dont think it was MBNA specifically...I think it was BofA (which is MBNA now) or Chase..maybe one of Codename47 posts

No doubt, exploiting the Saturday/Sunday billpay option isn't going to make big money, as LH2004 notes. But like everything else concerning CC BTs (or any investment for that matter), it's a risk/reward equation.


mst3k said:My head is spinning DaveHanson. I should not go above 50% utilization because it is too risky but I should pay my bill on the last possible day?No. You don't PAY on the last possible day; you set your AUTOPAY PULL on MBNA's website WEEKS in advance (so that you can forget about it), but have it set to POST on the cycle close date.Could not one little processing error rsult in universal default on all my other 0% cards get jacked to 30%?Sure, if you're paying the following due date. But the odds of such an error happening are no more likely if you had it set to pay Friday than if you had it set to pay Saturday. In other words, the cause woudln't be the Saturday pay, it would be something else (mistyped account number, etc.) And if you're paying down by the close of cycle, you're at much LESS risk, because an error doesn't mean you're late. Then I get even more confused because you seem to imply not the due date but the statement closing date.That's correct. It's part of the "rolling utilization" technique I've discussed in my credit threads. If the Saturday to Monday float is so huge that it is worth the risk versus paying 3-5 days early, how can throwing away the entire grace period not be worth it?If you're not throwing it away.

Perhaps an example will help. Suppose I have a $20k MBNA line, and a $25K HELOC, no fee CC, etc. that MBNA can billpay to. Suppose further that MBNA closes the first of the month. Then why not pay the MBNA down to $0 every first of the month, then do $20K worth of purchases/billpays on the 2d of the month. Then repeat. That means that on EVERY day of the month (save the first one or two), I'm gaining float. Much better than forgoing the several days between the due date and the cycle close date (e.g., the 25th through the first). Moreover, I'm showing 0% utilization every month. Even better, if something should go wrong, no biggie--I have 25 days to make it right BEFORE I'm late.

Does it make sense to you now?


SUCKISSTAPLES, I'm always open to having my mind changed...if anyone can offer an argument, evidence, anecdote, etc. as to why setting a payment on a Saturday or Sunday due date is less safe than having it set just 1-2 days earlier, on the previous Friday, I'm all ears. But as I explained, it wouldn't be the date, but some other cause (like a bad checking account). Even there, the problem wouldn't present itself until at least Saturday (after Friday's payments posted), when it would be too late to act before the cycle close date anyway.


To summarize, here are some billpay rules:

-Setting and sending billpay payments OUT as soon as the new cycle begins = reduced risk, no cost

-Setting payments IN and OUT well in advance = reduced risk, no cost

-Sending payments IN on the current cycle close date vs. next cycle due date = MUCH less risk, and actual SAVINGS (if one has sufficient billpays).

-Sending payments IN on the actual close or due date, if a Sat or Sunday, vs. on the preceding Friday, = no change in risk and modest savings.

DaveHanson said:Thanks for the details, frootmall. Is it your understanding that the Sat/Sunday payments are a recent change, or has this been going on for some time (and I just didn't notice)?
It's been going on since last year.
A quick search brought up this thread.
But has there EVER been a report of a problem with a billpay/online payment IN causing such problems, with ANY issuer, providing that it is SCHEDULED in a timely fashion, from a proper funding source? Not that I recall...

Bank of America changes late fee on account paid with their own Autopay!

frootmall said:It's been going on since last year.
A quick search brought up this thread.Right. That thread's title implied that weekend payments DIDN'T get credited until Monday, resulting in late fees. You're right that later in that thread, plloopp noted that as of December, they'd started allowing payments in effective a few weeks back. But has there EVER been a report of a problem with a billpay/online payment IN causing such problems, with ANY issuer, providing that it is SCHEDULED in a timely fashion, from a proper funding source? Not that I recall...

Bank of America changes late fee on account paid with their own Autopay!That thread isn't an example of this. BofA has a weird system where if you do a payment from another bank account at the last possible day, they late-fee you, then credit you automatically. (It even tells you this when you make a payment through their link.) To me personally, the most important thing is that the minimum payment is never late.That's good thinking. I take measures to do this also on my cards where it's relevant. It does assume that one has a minimum payment they need to pay in the first place. With MBNA billpay, it's easy to use it to its potential without ever even needing one (as per my rules above). I avoid scheduling for the last possible day. I always schedule at least a couple of days in advance. That gives me time to act if the payment doesn't go through for some reason. It's much easier to straighten it out before the deadline than after the deadline. Again, I agree with your reasoning. I use an account with a huge overdraft protection buffer to help avoid any nasty suprises. But again, if there's no minimum payment due, the subject is moot.

Moreover, if you're talking leaving enough time to act, you're talking about at least a couple of business days, not one calendar day. So, instead of $4-5 per $100, you're talking $15-20 per $10K.

frootmall--of course that was a typo--the $10K figure is right. So, it's $15-$20 minimum for each $10K, which means 1-2 hundred per month for me.

Much more important though, your strategy is actually MORE RISKY as well as more costly, since you're paying before the minimum due date, not the cycle date. (You're also getting nothing out of the period between the due date and the next cycle date.)

taylor said:What happens when MBNA decides to treat the Saturday payment differently? I doubt they will notify all card holders before they make the change. This seems particularly risky to me given the pending changes due to the BofA/MBNA merger.
Well, if you want to go down that path...
I suppose they could also cancel Billpay altogether effective tomorrow with no advance notice and cancel all of your pre-scheduled payments. That would leave you in quite a pickle if you scheduled for the last possible date and tomorrow is the due date.

Currently, if you try to schedule a payment for a Saturday to a non-eligible payee, it automatically moves your payment date back to Friday. That's how it handled MBNA payments before the change, too.