In July, PayPal announced that they had completed the purchase of the bill payment service Tio (formerly ChargeSmart). Now, via Business Wire, it was reported that PayPal suspended Tio’s operations to protect Tio’s customers. They wrote:
This suspension of services is a result of PayPal’s discovery of security vulnerabilities on the TIO platform and issues with TIO’s data security program that do not adhere to PayPal’s information security standards. TIO is not integrated into PayPal’s platform. The PayPal platform is not impacted by this situation in any way and PayPal’s customers’ data remains secure.
I haven’t written much about Tio in the past because their fees are much higher than Plastiq’s (a rival bill pay service which has not been shut down) and they don’t always allow payment with credit cards. One advantage of Tio, though, has been the ability to pay some credit card bills through the service via debit cards. Plastiq does not allow this. Still, for most bills, Plastiq is a better option.
For details about Plastiq, including a handy chart showing the types of bills that can and can’t be paid, see: Complete Guide to Plastiq.