9 Paperless Billing Perks and Drawbacks, How It Happens. Paper Billing has to be in existence for a long time, since the first year of the new millennium. Switching from paper bills to paperless billing saves a lot of time and it worth it. However, when you sign up for paperless billing statements, you will not be receiving a credit card statement in your mail again. Instead, your statement will be available online for your viewing. Often in PDF files such that you can download, save and print as the case may be. Each month your credit card issuers will Send you a mail informing you about your statement whenever it’s ready.
Additionally, most issuers include your minimum payment due and the due date in the body of the email for convenience. Therefore, if you are still contemplating on the old traditional paper statements, then consider the pros and cons before making your choice.
Pros And Cons of Paperless Billing statements
PROS
Paperless Billing safe the environment
Switching from paper to online statement save stamps and the entire environment. If credit card issuers send out less billing statement, there will be less demand on paper. According to pay Green studies from 2010 just 20% of American households switched from paper to all digital billing, statement, and payments, the collective effort will help the society. It will save 1,811,275 trees, avoidance producing almost two million tons of greenhouse gases.
Less Mail and paper in your Home
However, the removal of billing statements means there is less loose paper and clutter in your home. You will then be free from having to be sorting out bills and figure how what you should keep, what can be thrown away and what must be shredded
Whereas, if you download your bling statement, you can save them to your computer or external drive and access later when you need them. Most credit card issuers prepare billing statements and make them available online, so it’s may not be necessary to save your most recent statements.
Perks for Online Billing Statement
Most issuers offer incentives to cardholders, that signs up for paperless statement, For example, you may get some incentives when you switch to paperless billing statements some card issuers charges a fee to send paper statements and waive this fee when you sign up to receive your billing statement online.
Identity theft prevention
When you switch from paper statements to paperless billing statements, this helps to prevent identity theft resulting from stolen ma. Since statements are not mailed to your home, mail thieves won’t gain access to your credit card number if they intercept your mail. Even hacking your email account would not give theft access to your card information. Since you will have to log in to your credit card issuers website to view your statement. Emails from your credit card issuers never contain your full, account number
Cons
Email Address Change Notifications
Also, if you Change your address or email account, you have to notify your credit card issuers of the changes in your email address and housing address. Otherwise, you’ll miss the monthly notification that your billing statement is ready. You could also miss any email sent from your issuers and informing you if any fraudulent activities on your account or alerting you to other changes to your account.
Delay in Catching credit card fraud and credit charges
Additionally, if you have set up an automatic payment for your account, you could easily forget to review your statement each month, a step that will enable catch credit card fraud on your account. You have 60 days to report billing errors, beyond that the creditor could make you pay for purchases you never made.
In addition, there’s another consequence of not reading your credit card billing statement, there will be no alert to changes in your minimum payment. If your minimum payment increases beyond the past payment you have set, you’ll be see a late fee even if the payment is made on time. After 60 days, your interest rate will also increase and the late payment status will hit your credit report.
with Paperless billing Less Access to Previous Statements
Moreover, credit card issuers only make available some numbers of statements available online. If you want to access other, you’ll need to pay a fee to gain access to the older statement. For example, for tax purposes, you may have to go through a few extra steps. You can get this by printing your billing statement out each month and filing it away so as to have access to it at any time.
More password to Remember
When you sign up for Online billing it means that you must have a username and password to remember. Even if you try to use one particular on for all your sites, which is not an ideal thing to do. The con of billing statement online makes you stress out without always trying to remember a username and password. Although, if you can’t remember your password or username, you can use the password recovery process to check and recover your password.
Paperless Billing, It is easier to miss payments
One of the Cons of the paperless statements is that it’s easy to forget to send your payment when you don’t have a physical bill as a reminder. A paper envelope with your bill inside can remind you as you are skipping the paper around you. Another is that your email remainder sent by your credit card issuers may be trap in a spam filter and never deliver in your mailbox.