Paying Bills
There are two common ways for bills to be paid directly from your bank account - direct debit and standing order.
Both are commonly used to make payments of all sorts of bills from mortgages and loans to credit card bills, rates and utility bills. Often companies will offer discounts if you agree to pay regularly by one of these methods.
With direct debits you are giving a company or other organisation permission to take money out of your account on a regular basis. There is a direct debit guarantee in place which means that any errors or overpayments should be refunded straight away but you should remember that you are allowing a third party to access your account and take varying amounts on a regular basis.
Standing orders operate on a slightly different basis. Effectively you give the bank a written instruction asking it to make regular payments of a fixed amount of money from your account.
