both ways: With bill-pay, the local utilities companies aren't in the system, and they're not processing their own bill-pays on time or the "system is down for security reasons". I nearly had to eat next to $100 in non/reversed payment fees from Verizon cause of that system. Cause Verizon (which was on the bank's bill-pay) was not certified as "Fraud protected" by Regions. Took me and Verizon a month to hunt down the problem before we finally found that since Verizon was not part of the "Regions/Visa fraud prevention network" that they would no long honor Verizon payments through bill pay.