Think about how much time you spend arranging and rearranging your credit cards on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. Think about all those instances, a few minutes here and there, put together into one big block. What would you rather do with your time? Sort through your credit card bills, or watch a movie? We invest a lot of time managing our credit card bills, whether it’s sorting through the PPS system, writing out cheques to beneficiaries, or even dropping documents off at bank. This all sounds like a lot of work to keep up to date with our finances, but just how much time are we talking about here? By early 2018, it was estimated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority that each Hong Konger owned an average of 2.7 credit cards. If we assume that each credit card we own takes roughly 30 minutes a month for us to manage, we’re talking about 81 minutes a month. Multiply that by 12 months a year, and now we’re talking about roughly 16.2 hours a year where we do nothing but revise our transactions and pay off credit card bills! For reference, the entire The Lord of the Rings trilogy clocks in at 11.4 hours only, and that’s the extended versions! Three entire seasons of The Simpsons clocks in at 14.3 hours! Going back to the question we posed at the start of this article, which would you rather be doing? Fortunately, we have a great solution to help you manage your own finances, particularly if they span across multiple banks and accounts. Each bank that is currently supported on gini allow their customers to set up something called a “direct debit authorisation” (DDA). The DDA service makes settling bills a quicker, simpler process by allowing you to set whether your credit card bills are automatically settled based on a preset percentage amount of your monthly statement, or the minimum amount stated in your monthly statement. For example, through DDA you could set it so that your monthly credit card bill is automatically settled based on the minimum of that month’s statement, or 60% of the statement balance. All you have to do is keep sufficient fund in your bank account that is tied your card! Below is quick guide for customers from gini’s supported banks to see how they can get started on their DDA setup today! Disclaimer: Be sure to clarify with the bank your credit card is associated with regarding the necessary fees for setting up your DDA process! For Bank of China credit cards (BoC): Download the direct debit authorisation form here, fill it out, and hand it in to your nearest BoC branch! For Hang Seng Bank credit cards: Download the direct debit authorisation form here, fill it out, then hand it in to your nearest Hang Seng branch! For HSBC credit cards: Download the direct debit authorisation form here, fill it out, then hand it in to your nearest HSBC branch! For American Express (AMEX) credit cards: To begin the direct debit authorisation process, AMEX customers can obtain the form by calling the cardmember hotline (2277 1010) and following the instructions from there! For Bank of East Asia (BEA) credit cards: There are three different direct debit authorisation forms depending on the type of account you plan to set autopay from! The bank’s website provides forms for HKD accounts, RMB accounts, and BEA corporate card accounts. For Citibank credit cards: Download the FlexiAutopay set-up form here and fill it out! The form comes attached with a formatted letter that you can send to Citibank’s P.O. Box, so you won’t have to hand the form in yourself! For Standard Chartered credit cards: Standard Chartered’s website has a helpful step-by-step guide to show how their customers can set up their electronic direct debit authorisation via Standard Chartered’s mobile or online banking platforms. Click through here to see the full guide! There’s a lot of legwork in managing that many transactions across multiple credit cards and bank accounts, especially with ensuring that some hacker from Russia hasn’t stolen your identity yet. In cases like this, having a personal financial management (PFM) appcan help, but we need to know what issues there are to tackle! Thus, we hope that this has been a helpful guide to you, yet another step towards taking control of your life from the crazy mess of finances and bills! Feel free to enjoy your newly found spare time with a movie, or even a whole season of a TV show! P.S. This article is for those who wish to set up autopay to settle credit card bills, but you could use the DDA system to settle bills and utilities as well! We have a list of the banks above that also provide forms to set up DDA for bill payments! For Hang Seng users: Download the direct debit authorisation form here, fill it out, then hand it in to your nearest Hang Seng branch! For Citibank users: Download the all-in-one autopay set-up form here and fill it out! The form comes attached with a formatted letter that you can send to Citibank’s P.O. Box, so you won’t have to hand the form in yourself! For HSBC users: Download the direct debit authorisation form here, fill it out, then hand it in to your nearest HSBC branch! For Bank of China users (BoC): Download the direct debit authorisation form here, fill it out, and hand it in to your nearest BoC branch! The structure of the DDA for bill settlement is slightly different. Instead of a minimum amount or percentage, you can set a limit to how much is devoted to each bill. For example, you could indicate that your electricity bill is automatically settled up to a limit, say 3,000 dollars. The bank ensures that it will not draw more from your account than the limit you specified, and all you have to do is keep sufficient funds in the bank account you’re tying the DDA to! Additionally, you can set expiry dates for these automated payments within any range you like, so you can give the DDA system a try before you fully commit to saving your time and energy!
