Your Guide to the Latest Digital Money Tools

Paying bills? Don’t worry about stamp prices, delivery delays

Use online payments. In mid-July the price of stamps went up for the second time this year. Paper checks — and the cursive handwriting you use to fill them out — are falling out of favor thanks in part to mail theft and delivery delays.

How they work. Utility companies, doctors’ offices and other service providers you use often offer an option to pay online through their websites. Just log in with your credentials and enter your credit or debit card information. This can be useful for occasional bills, such as a doctor visit.

For recurring bills, such as your mortgage or utilities payments, a potentially easier method is to use the bill-paying service your bank provides on its website and mobile app. There, you can enter the provider’s info, which is stored for future reference.

When you need to pay a bill, enter the amount and hit submit. The money is drawn from your account and the payment sent.

Are they safe? If you use the provider’s website, be sure to check the web address before paying a bill online.

It should contain a small padlock icon 🔒 next to the site name, and the URL should begin with “https” rather than “http.” These elements signal that your information is encrypted — and therefore safe — as it passes from your browser over the internet to the website’s server.

Bank websites are highly secure, for obvious reasons.

“When you pay bills online, there’s a digital record,” Kamber says. And you’ll have no paper check for someone to intercept.

A caveat. If you’re used to putting your check in the mail before having money deposited or transferred to cover it, online payments do away with that “float,” the delay between writing a check and having the money taken out of your account.

Tips. When paying on a company’s website or using your bank, you typically can set up automatic disbursements, helpful if the amount is stable, such as for internet service or cable TV.

“Just make sure there’s a little extra cushion in the bank account” to avoid overdrafts, Kamber says.

Another advantage to paying online, especially when using your bank’s service, is that you can schedule a payment’s exact date.

Managing your money? Take a look at the big picture

Use online financial programs. With the shutdown of the popular Mint personal finance app in March, many people are looking for a new option to see their overall financial picture.

How they work. Popular new solutions include online programs such as Monarch Money, Rocket Money and Simplifi. All can keep track of your account balances and help manage your spending. They’ll even alert you to streaming services and other subscriptions you have but may have forgotten about.

“Credit cards don’t feel like real money, and now we have digital wallets and virtual ways to pay,” Woroch says. “You have no idea at the end of the month how much you spend and how much you owe. And that can get you into trouble.”

Using these tools, you can get an overview of your finances all in one place without having to log in to various accounts, she says.

Are they safe? These services use the same type of online security you’ll find from your bank, a standard called 256-bit encryption. But you’ll need to make sure that the logins for your overall service and each of your online financial accounts have strong, unique passwords to thwart hackers.

A caveat. To get that dynamically updating financial overview, you must link all of your bank, brokerage, credit card and other financial accounts to the service by entering your usernames and passwords.

“You grant the provider access to multiple financial accounts,” says President and CEO Anabel Perez of NovoPayment, a Miami-area firm that provides financial technology to companies. That means your banking accounts could be linked to this software, so “ensure you’re only giving that information to providers you trust.”

Large, well-known companies are usually a good place to start. Free services you’ve never heard of or haven’t researched could be problematic, she says.

Tip. Because of the complexity and costs, this software is best only if you’re comfortable with using technology and you plan to access most of the features.​

Want to boost your credit score? Monitor it electronically

Use apps to understand your score. Americans’ average FICO credit score declined last year for the first time in a decade, according to a report released in March. Sure, the drop was just one point to 717, a good score that would still qualify for the lowest interest rates.

But if your credit score is lower, the first step toward raising it is figuring out why it’s weak.

How they work. Apps like Aura, Credit Karma and Credit Sesame monitor your credit and warn you of potentially fraudulent activity. They will also suggest ways to boost your score.

Are they safe? A credit-monitoring app will take the personally identifiable information that is asked of you to communicate with at least one of the three major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — on your behalf. If someone tries to use your data to open an account, you will know right away instead of months or years later when undoing the damage is more complicated.

A caveat. These apps all act as middlemen. While they might organize information in an easy-to-digest format, you can deal directly with the three major credit bureaus, says Bruce McClary, spokesman for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.

Tip. Each credit bureau also has tools you can use to boost your score if you want to cut out the middleman, McClary says. But you can give a credit-monitoring app permission to look at your payment history on accounts that might not show up on your credit score otherwise, such as your cable TV and cellphone bills.

“That can be significant if you’re right on the margin of good and great credit or poor and fair credit,” he says. “It can bump you over that line.”

Cutting clutter? Receive your bills, statements online

​Use your inbox, not your mailbox. You could save up to 6.6 pounds of paper a year by getting digital statements.

How they work. Electronic bills or account statements contain at least as much information as the paper copies you receive in the mail and sometimes allow more interactivity, such as categorizing expenses.

You can funnel your monthly bills to one place, your email inbox. Even better: Sign up for full online access to your accounts so you can review them whenever you wish.

Are they safe? Digital statements are considered safer than mailed statements because stealing from your physical mailbox is far easier than from your email account, which usually has several layers of protection, Kamber says.

A caveat. That protection often means passwords. If you struggle to remember the password to your email account, you could get locked out if you don’t use a password manager or didn’t previously associate an alternate email address or phone number with the account.

Tip. To go paperless, log in to your account and update your preferences, or call the provider and ask to receive digital statements and bills. ​

This story, originally published March 7, 2022, has been updated throughout, also including information on the Cash App data breach settlement.