Electronic payments between accounts at different banks

October 4, 2016 12:17 AM

Chase says it should work but Wells Fargo says no go.

My homeowners association has their bank account at Wells Fargo. I have an account at Chase and have been paying my HOA dues via QuickPay (electronic payment). Recently Chase joined something called clearXchange which apparently is a utility to send money person-to-person via accounts at differing banks. Wells Fargo is also a member of clearXchange.

A Chase helpline representative told me the electronic payment should continue to work (with a few changes on the recipient's end) but so far it has not. The HOA manager says they were told by Wells Fargo that a QuickPay payment to their similar function called SurePay won't work, even though both banks are supposed to be using this clearXchange utility. Does anyone here have any ideas on what might be going wrong and how to fix it? This problem has been going on for two months.

Note, I can revert to using Chase's billpay function but that takes five business days to process (which means they take it out of my account five days earlier), plus involves mailing a paper check. Then the HOA has to physically deposit the check. Avoiding all that is why we had switched to electronic payments.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (3 answers total)

We use Quickpay to send a recurring amount to a relative who uses a small credit union. I forget exactly what we did but I think he may have had to actually set up an account on the ClearXchange website that then routes the money to his bank. I'll ask our relative, but anyway, the point is, QuickPay works with his minuscule credit union so it should work with Wells Fargo.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 12:47 AM on October 4, 2016

I have found exactly none of the payment systems between different US banks to be flawless or reliable, but I'm one of those people with many different banks, so maybe I am demanding. I find Europe, Australia/NZ and Canada to be far, far superior: one system all the banks agreed upon decades ago.

Anyway, I'm not sure how your HOA feels about it, but since it's within the same country and not a good or service, Paypal works remarkably well, and does not incur a fee on either end when you choose the "send money to friends and family" option, rather than "pay for goods and services".

And before anyone gets rankled, this is just fine with Paypal, since one of the acceptable uses for that no-fees option is:

Living Expenses - Use this payment type when you need to pay regular, recurring expenses like rent or utilities. (from here)

So it's another option if you want to keep the banky tricksiness out of things, at least.
posted by rokusan at 3:10 AM on October 4, 2016

I gave up on Wells Fargo SurePay. I never could get it to send money to my daughter away at college. I fell back to Paypal, which may be evil, but at least it actually works.
posted by COD at 5:20 AM on October 4, 2016