How to Pay Your Credit Card Bills Online to Protect Your Credit Score

Online payment of any bills — including credit card bills — offers significant advantages toward the objective of maintaining good relationships with creditors and, in turn, protecting your credit score. You may visit the website of each credit card issuer, register and thereafter access each account in order to pay the monthly bills, or you may enroll in an online bill payment service offered by your bank or credit union.

Things You'll Need

• Credit card bill
• Computer
• Checking account

Instructions

1. Visit the website of the credit card issuer and look for a link titled "Cardholder Services," "Your Account," "My Account" or something similar that clearly indicates access to your account online.

2. Click on the link. Typically, visitors to such webpages will find two options — accessing an existing account or registering to create a new account. Click on "Register" or "Create a Username and Password," or a similar link. Proceed through the registration process as prompted by the website.

3. Click on "Pay Bill" or "Make a Payment" after you have registered. Provide your checking account number and your financial institution's routing number when prompted to do so. The nine digits preceding a colon in the lower left-hand corner of your personal check is the routing number. The digits that follow the colon form the account number.

4. Follow the prompts, which may vary slightly from one card issuer's website to another, to complete your payment.

5. Print the acknowledgment of payment received. Alternatively, select the content of the payment confirmation page, copy it and paste it into a Word file to conserve paper and ensure an accessible personal electronic record of your payment.

Tips & Warnings

• Visit your financial institution's website and look for online bill payment information. By setting up online bill payment through your bank or credit union, you may pay all bills from one website.

• Schedule automatic payments through the websites of your card issuers or your financial institution if you are confident that sufficient funds for the payments will be in your checking account.

• Be aware of the time of day by which a payment must be made on the due date in order to ensure that the payment will be credited on that date.

References

• Bankrate.com; Your online bill payment options; Jerry McCune; April 22, 2005
• Bankrate.com; Oneline Banking; Oct. 20, 2008