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But if your creditor's servers are glitched or hacked and your information is compromised , you will need hard copy(paper) to verify your transactions.
And what hard copy would that be? I doubt anyone has checking accounts that actually returns cancelled checks anymore. Many creditors don't even send checks to you bank, but electronically send an image of your check to your bank.
Your bank, and billpay service will verify payment made. I had one billpay payment by check from the credit union arrive late. The credit union resolved the late payment, late fee, etc. and proved the problem was with the post office (this was for a creditor that didn't accept electronic payments then. The delay was traced down to a massive power failure at a Dallas TX mail sorting facility that delayed huge amounts of mail for days.
You or I as a private citizen would have had a hard time proving why it was late, and would have taken more time than it would have been worth.
Hard copy you say you need, most banks charge $5 for a copy of a check these days.
I guess what it boils down to is that each of us should be able to utilize whatever method is the easiest, and the most comfortable for us. For those folks who like going paperless, more power to them. There's nothing wrong with that. But, for those of us who like paper, I hope we'll be given a little leeway, also. There's still quite a few of us who prefer more traditional methods, whether it's paying bills/debts, keeping records, or reading a newspaper, or book. It really is a matter of preference, whichever direction one takes.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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The only mail we get is junk mail, which rarely makes it into the house past the recycling bin. I cannot remember the last time we sent something in the U.S. mail. We have "opted out" of the phone book as it went directly into the recycling bin too so we haven't had one in years. We may still print an occasional airline boarding pass, I just don't trust that my I-Phone will cooperate when I go to board the plane, but otherwise our printer uses very little paper. All of our bills are paid online, with text message alerts when they are rendered, though the mortgage people still send a confirmation by mail after we pay it. Books are downloaded from Amazon or the library website and read on I-Pads. I still get one magazine, (Hotrod, a gift) but plan to let it expire and use the online version.
We do everything possible to be paperless. All our bills are paid on line, most via credit card or directly from the bank. Only write a check about 5 times a year, usually for a gift. We opt out of catalogs and rarely get any mail. Whatever mail we do get goes into the shredder. In the grocery store we bring our reusable bags, recycle more than half of our trash including cans and bottles. Use filtered water from refrigerator instead of bottled water. We recycled all our books we had, either donating to the library or recycle bin. We use Kindles and no longer buy books.
Pretty old fashioned here. Pay bills with checks, hate e-mail, carry cash and use the dreaded USPS. Not to say I'm totally computer averse, I just hate how my e-mail account fills up with SPAM and if I did receive electronic notices that weren't actually junk, I'd never find them buried in the mass of SPAM I get. I always thought that senders of SPAM should pay a small fee for each piece of crap they send, much like you would if you were mailing bulk mail through the USPS. At least if there was a charge it would greatly reduce the amount of unsolicited crap you'd get.
I fully use both paper and paperless methods for billing and records. If my computer broke down, I wouldn't want to be left without a means to receive bills and notices. And I feel much less likely to lose my records of important things, by having both.
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