(I'll just copy my answer from reddit below) That was an odd article from northern european perspective. You really haven't had direct bank payments via web i

(I'll just copy my answer from reddit below) That was an odd article from northern european perspective. You really haven't had direct bank payments via web in US before this? We had those before web credit card payments and they are implemented by the banks themselves (it's a standard here, I have actually implemented some of this stuff with our company) The article also talks about rent payments.. You don't have automatic recurring payment option in your web bank interface? can you make payments from one bank account to other via web interface at all? (then someone answered that there are not bank-to-bank transfers or more advanced stuff like direct payments don't exists and I continued...) Wow that's odd. Just for comparison, people here would probably revolt if transfering money from one account to other would cost something. That's how everyone here pays bills. Before people would go to banks and make transfer form account to other to pay bills there, some 10-20 years ago banks themselves started to move all this to their web interfaces to reduce the need for physical locations (basically to cut costs). The whole europe is now moving to "SEPA" system where all bank accounts are standardized so from now on this can be done europe-wide. Sepa also has this new "e-payment" system that makes all kinds of things like direct billing possible EU-wide. http://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/article.cfm?articles_uuid=BCFC9AFD-BDA2-FC9C-B434859EC6A9CC95 http://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/article.cfm?articles_u...