In the US, for normal personal accounts, - Only some banks have the ability to initiate an arbitrary ACH transfer online (transfer between accounts that you ow

In the US, for normal personal accounts, - Only some banks have the ability to initiate an arbitrary ACH transfer online (transfer between accounts that you own at other banks is a little bit more common). - Even fewer of those banks make this feature free. - Sometimes it is very well hidden inside the "Online Bill-Pay" feature (which wants you to search for an institutional payee by name), and no indication is given that you might use it to pay someone who is not a large corporate biller. - Credit card companies and utilities usually provide a feature to give them your account number so that they do ACH withdrawals from their side automatically. They like it because you can't forget to pay. You should be wary of it because money just disappears from your account with no action taken on your part, and that's scary. A push-based option is much rarer - they will never just give you an account/routing number to push money to. - There is never under any circumstances any kind of fee to write or deposit a check (provided it doesn't bounce). - Usually your first couple of checkbooks are free (or pennies per check). If your banking relationship is large enough, then depending on your bank subsequent checkbook orders may be free as well. - Far and away the easiest, least risky, most comfortable way to pay someone you are sitting next to is for you to write a check, and for them to take a picture of it with their mobile banking app. Yes, it's idiotic.