I am not Williampaid, nor do I pretend to speak for them. But I am a merchant who is tired of abuses to the credit card system that I feel are causing "fees" to increase for all of us.

Williampaid has a business model (and agreements with credit card processors) to provide a certain service. Within that model, they feel they can offer said service for a "fee." Their model does not include payments for a mortgage and if they didn't care who the money was sent to, they would have also accepted paying my mortgage for me as they already pay rent for me.

What you are asking them to do is not what their service is designed for. They "care" because payments to a landlord are very different than payments to an individual. Payments to a landlord are intended to be more than a "one shot deal" and have less inherent risk than random payments to an individual.

No disrespect to you either, cjpat44, but do you use (or have you used) Williampaid? From my experience in establishing a relationship with them to use their service, there was "more" than just specifying a name of a landlord, and who the money was being sent to was "vetted" before they would allow me to use their service.

A merchant is "on the hook" for chargebacks. If you are not a merchant who has experienced a "chargeback" (legitimate or not), from my experience as a merchant, it is time consuming to sort everything out - and the credit card processor deducts the disputed amount from the merchant's bank account BEFORE the merchant has an opportunity to defend the chargeback. (And the customer still has the goods or service). So, as a merchant, I do not have the merchandise OR any money while the chargeback is in dispute.

In Williampaid's case, Williampaid (or a similar service) could send the check to someone and the person who was intending to send the check could "dispute" the charge on their credit card and ask for a chargeback.

Williampaid (or a similar service) would then be "out" the money until the dispute is resolved. They would have sent the money to the recipient by a check, the recipient would have cashed the check and they would have nothing to show for it.

How many times do you think this needs to happen before a company suffers financially?

Ah - I see from your explanation why WP would have such a policy: payments to landlords are unlikely to be charged back. This probably also explains why banks will send a check to anybody - because the fees are deducted before the check is ever written, so no risk of the above. I'm still not sure why, though, it would be such an abuse of their system to send the check to a third party (not a landlord) if you don't charge back your payment. In that case, nobody is really out anything and everybody, cc company included, gets their fees. Not that I'm condoning breaking the rules, but I just don't see this as a moral issue in the way that the Costco return actually harms them.

The "morality" has to do with the fact that the business is set up to pay landlords. They don't say, "pay anyone you want to" or of course if it were not so risky they would gladly pay anyone as it would increase their business.

My concern lies with the assumption that "they don't care who they pay" (as posted by ORG-TGU) so just substitute a name so they will pay it. To me, that's just plain wrong and is an attempt to "scam" the system.

cjpat44 - you never answered my question - and I will address ORG-TGU as well, are you a Williampaid user?

Yes, I am a WP user, for more than a year, and yes to make one rent payment a month. I use it in a legit way. I do hate their new and old interface, so buggy, but it does the job. Scheduling is a mess. But check arrives and had not had a problem. I text my landlord just to verify payment. I find the fees too high just for the miles, but I find it fantastic for meeting minimum spend.

I once read on this forum "pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered" so I stick to the rules, believe me or not.