OP's issue is related to noth have been accessed the MBNA BillPay before the site's move to BofA's system.

Is there such an issue of not being able to use MBNA BillPay if you haven't used it before the website merger? The answer would have serious implications to decisions of applying for other MBNA type cards in the future, since even if you acquire them, you won't be able to use them to pay cards and bills, they're kinda useless.

OP, is this what you're saying?

which card is it? World Points?
BOFA bill pay is down again, I'll double check when it comes back up.

yes the adress is the same, but the list of cards that can be used is different FIA only offers Fidelity, Schwabb, Merrill, Wachovia and BOFA offers the rest.

I had to finally give this thread a green point, because it raises a red flag over ex-MBNA BillPay. It seems a classical case of having gotten grandfathered in.

One more question: asdf, you said you haven't used the BillPay at all. It would be important to know if this would be the case even for individual cards not included previously in the BillPay system, or if you just used one card for it, all your other former MBNA cards BillPay-enabled can be used, because just one card previously used for BillPay qualified them all into BillPay.

I have some recently issued worldpoints cards...and clicked around to see if I can get the billpay service and havent been able to find anything...my old mbna cards that had signed up for the billpay (from the old mbna site) have been transferred to the boa site with continued availability for the service...

as to above edit: do realize anyone's hesitancy for not posting in public any trick / workaround...........

I just posted as a new thread my experiences and what I learned from a MBNA representative. I will repeat it here.

I just finished a very long conversation with a BOA representative. I had been routinely getting an error message when I tried to go from the BOA main site to the pay your bills by credit card tab which appears as it used to (after the conversion it occasionally had given access to the old MBNA bill pay). the web site continues to promise “Use your credit card to pay bills You can use your MBNA-issued credit card to pay select local and national companies. Pay bills now.”

However clicking on the message now produced the message “There was a problem processing your request.
• There was a problem accessing the system.
• We are unable to complete your request at this time. Please try again later.”

It seems that Checkfree automatically makes the credit card bill pay inaccessible when you have or open a BOA checking account. He stated the problem arose because I had a BOA checking account, but since the bill pay became inaccessible to me only after I opened a new BOA banking account (in response to a very generous $250 promotion they were offering.) it appears to happen only if you open a new BOA checking account.

Notice they do not give you an accurate account of why you can not longer access your ill pay by credit card, but suggest you waste your time trying repeatedly to get to it. You may eventually decide to phone in and after h usual long waits get to the “Online Banking Group” they then offer to refer you to the Credit Card Bill Pay group (direct phone is 1-800-887-5749 is save people some trouble).

It appears the representative there can access your records and tell you what bill pays are scheduled, but you cannot do so yourself.

He indicated he had no way to alter or change any specific payment, although he could cancel all future bill pays.

In my case, I had just sent $600 to a ex-MBNA card well before the statement closed (and even earlier before it was due). I had just used the system to order a payment to another credit card with a promo rate that was disappearing (.i.e. jumping to a very high rate) that would bring that card to near its credit limit. I then planned to immediately use the ex-MBNA bill pay to send the $600 on to the credit card I wanted it to go to.

You (and BOA) may ask why I did not use the BOA Bill Pay to accomplish the same thing, and possibly quicker. The reason was that I was adding a new Bill Pay account is work and I had the MBNA bill pay already set up for the card I wanted to pay and did not anticipate many other payments to that card (at least not from BOA).

While in my case taking $600 out of my checking account when I did not need to is a nuisance (I can lay my hands on $600 from other places), it is easy to imagine poorer people who on paying their ex-MBNA card early, expecting to use it to pay their bills will have a problem.

The nice and police BOA representative was able to tell me about payment to my local gas utility that I could no longer access. We joked about how not having paid them can get your heat cut off (I know they do threaten that weapon and use it if you do not pay your bills), and a poorer customer unable to pay their gas company (or unable to access the record to prove they had) because they had sent the money to BOA on the BOA representations that they could then pay the gas bill through their BOA card as they historically had, could find themselves in the cold.

In fact there are a lot of Americans for whom having a few hundred dollars or a few thousand paid to a bank because of that banks is-misrepresentation of their payment system would be put in a bad financial situation.

While it is possible BOA will eventually fix this problem, since I suspect the top management did not intend to create a situation where it would be unwise for the millions who used MBNA bill pay to open checking accounts with BOA. (They indeed were running adds offering $100 to MBNA customers who opened new BOA checking accounts) if they do it will probably take a while to do so.

In the short run ex MBNA customers may wish to avoid opening new BOA checking accounts.

Should they wish to do so in order to take advantage of an offer (or simply because a BOA branch is well located) they should be prepared to lose their ability to pay cards via the old MBNA bill pay. They should print out a list of all scheduled payments so they know what is scheduled. (apparently the old ones will go through, but are hard to alter).

If they have FOA serviced cards (old MBNA cards with brands such as Fidelity or Schwab) they can get bill pay via the FIX Services site. Fortunately, with the merger credit lines can be reallocated between cards by service representatives, and you could shift most of your credit lines to a FIX serviced card (or what ever amount is needed to pay the bills you plan to pay this way). Ideally, you might shift enough so you do not show high utilization on these cards.

Of course, you may have good reasons for keeping a large credit line on an old MBNA card that is now branded BOA and that may interfere with the above strategy.

Their preference for you using their checking is not surprizing (most firms prefer lyou do things in the way that makes them the most money), although many go out of their way to serve their customers even if it raises their own costs.

What is appalling is their failure to tell us what they were doing in advance, leaving us without access to records and scheduled payments.

It should be noted that while many of their competitors also offer checking accounts, most of them have a way to easily pay from another bank even you have an account with them.

Actually, I just learned BOA has a separate site myeasypayment.com where you can enter data to make payments from other banks. It appears however that you have to have the funds leave your accounts several days in advance of the due date (while the old MBNA payment system would let you schedule for the due date or other preferred date, credit the payment as made that day, and then take the money from an account (usually the next day I beleive). It does not appear as sophisticated as some smaller banks offer (you have to manually enter the card number for the cardl you have to pay for instance, creating a risk of paying someone elese's card by mistake).

Most other banks provide a link to their equivalent services from within their web sites, rather than having a separate site you only learn of if you ask.

I can easily imagine someone not being able to pay the bill on the due date because they presumed they would have access to the old system (as we had been led to believe) and then BOA canceled the system on them suddenly.

You can see my long discussion of this problem in another posting.

whoDean said:^^^This does not surprise me at all, why would BOA want to allow you to pay bills with their credit card if you also have a checking account with them? They would steer you to a checking account instead.

What was the reason they invented Bankamericard, currently called Visa? They also had checking...

ProfessorEd said:Good news.

My access to the old mbna bill pay reappeared this morning.

The major difference is that it was labeled mbna/BOA rather than just BOA.


This site included all of my old mbna cards (including those I can accesss through the FIA site).This is convenent when one wishes to use all of your cards.

Logging on a few minutes ago I ould reach bill pay via credit card and it worked, but it only offered me options involving certain BOA branded ex-mbna cards. The site was branded BOA.

The bug still exists that if you click on Accounts (such as to see what credit limit a card has) it brings me to the FIA site with information on those cards. This can be woked around by opening a separate window for the BOA cards, but this is a nuisance. BOA very quickly logs you out for inactivity, forcing you to go through a multi-step procedure to go back in. You are constantly bouncing from one site to the other, relogging in.

I wish I understood just what was happening so I could plan. I am not certain what got my problem corrected. the account representative had said he would talk to his supervisor, and perhaps someone decided to change things, but that is just a guess.

For others the lesson might be to be careful and at a minimum to print out a list of scheduled payments before doing anything that might disrupt them.

Whay website do you mean? I am using 2, www.ibsnetaccess.com gives me billpay with 2 of my old MBNA cards that didnt move over, and bankofamerica.com gives me billpay with a MBNA card that moved over and a pre-existing BOFA card. Both show the same list of payments though.