Paying bills

You can use your bank account to pay for goods and services, or to pay your bills, by using:

Direct Debit

Standing order
Cheques

Direct Debit

A direct debit is a payment taken from your account by a third party, once you have given them written permission. You might pay bills such as your mortgage, telephone bill or services such as your gas or electricity by direct debit.

You may, for example, give the electricity service provider permission to withdraw variable amounts of money to pay your electricity bill every two months.

To stop a direct debit you must cancel it by writing to your bank. You should also contact the third-party supplier - in this example, your electricity service provider - to make sure that the direct debit has been cancelled.

Most banks charge a penalty if there is not enough money in your account to meet the direct debt. See our personal current account cost comparison to compare fees and charges.

You can find out more about the direct debit scheme in Ireland, by visiting the Irish Payment Services Organisation (IPSO) website.

Standing order

With a standing order you instruct your bank to make regular fixed payments from your account to another account. You might pay ongoing expenses in this way, for example your rent.

You instruct your bank about how much is to be paid and when, for example, on a certain date every month, or once a week. The amount does not change unless you ask your bank to change it.

To cancel or change a standing order, you should contact  your bank.  It is usually better to do this in writing and keep copies of correspondence.  There may be a charge for setting up or changing a standing order.

Once you have set up a standing order on your account, you can be sure that your regular payments will be made as long as you have money in your account to meet those payments. If there is not enough money in your account, your bank may charge a penalty. Check our current account cost comparison to compare fees and charges.

Cheques

A cheque is a written instruction to your bank to pay a certain amount of money from your account to the person or company you have made the cheque out to.

Clearing

All cheques lodged must go through a cheque clearing cycle, which is monitored by the Irish Payments Services Organisation (IPSO).  If you receive money by cheque and lodge it to your bank account, it can take 3 to 5 working days to clear.  So make sure that there is always enough money in your account to pay cheques you write, otherwise you may be charged a penalty, or the bank may refuse to pay out and your cheque will bounce.

The clearing process is normally shorter when your account is with the same bank as the person who wrote the cheque. Clearing usually takes the longest when the cheque is from a bank outside Ireland.  Once you lodge a cheque to your account, you may see the lodgement on your statement immediately, but you may not be able to withdraw the money until the cheque has cleared.

If you are sending a cheque in the post, you should make sure it is crossed, to avoid someone else (not the person you made it out to) cashing the cheque.

A cheque is considered out-of-date 6 months after the date shown on the cheque.

Clearing cheques abroad

Some countries abroad can take several weeks to clear a cheque so check before you send. Electronic credit transfer is a faster method of sending a payment abroad you can use your credit card or an online account such as paypal for these transactions.

Cancelling a cheque

A cheque can only be cancelled by the bank that operates the account that the cheque is written against. To cancel a cheque, you must notify your bank in writing, giving them the account number and the cheque number of the cheque to be cancelled.

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