Pros and Cons of Paperless Billing Statements

Switching from paper bills to paperless billing might save time, but is it worth it?

Paperless billing allows you to access your monthly credit card statement online rather than receiving a mailed copy. Each month, your credit card issuer will send an email when your statement is ready. For your convenience, some credit card issuers also include your minimum payment due and the due date in the body of the email. If you're thinking about ditching traditional paper statements, consider the pros and cons before you make the change.

Pro: Saving the Trees

Paperless statements are helpful for the environment by reducing the amount of paper we use. Fewer billing statements means less demand for paper and less air pollution from paper production. Some credit card issuers incentivize paperless billing by making their own contributions to environmental causes when you sign up for paperless billing.

Con: Easier to Miss Payments

Without receiving a mailed statement, you could forget to send your payment. As an alternative to a mailed physical statement as a due date reminder, you could put a recurring monthly reminder on your home calendar, set a reminder on your phone, or put a post-it on another bill.

Pro: Less Mail and Paper in Your Home

The elimination of billing statements means less loose paper and clutter in your home. You’ll save time sorting through bills and figuring out what you should keep, what can be thrown in the trash, and what must be shredded.

If you download your billing statements, you can save them to your computer or external drive and access them later when you need them. Most credit card issuers make several months of billing statements available online, so it may not be necessary to save your most recent statements.

Con: More Passwords to Remember

Signing up for online billing means you’ll have yet another username and password to remember. Even if you try to use the same ones for all your sites—which generally isn’t a good idea—there are always a few sites with slightly different restrictions that will require you to come up with something different from what you normally use, something that you’re more likely to forget. And if you can't remember your password, you’ll have to use the password recovery process to check your statement every time you forget your password.

Pro: Perks for Online Billing Statements

Some credit card issuers offer incentives to cardholders who sign up for paperless statements. For example, you may be entered into sweepstakes when you switch to paperless billing statements.

Con: Less Access to Previous Statements

Credit card issuers typically only make a certain number of statements available online. If you need more than that, e.g., for tax purposes, you may have to go through a few extra steps to access older statements. You could get around this by downloading your billing statement each month and saving it to a file on your computer. That way, you can access your statements whenever you need to.

Pro: Identity Theft Prevention

Switching to paperless statements could help prevent identity theft resulting from stolen mail. Since statements aren’t mailed to your home, mail thieves won’t get access to your credit card number if they intercept your mail. Thankfully, emails from your credit card issuer should never contain your full account number which gives you extra protection if your email account is compromised.

Pro: Spot Fraud More Quickly

A paper statement comes once a month, meaning you would have to wait to check for errors every 30 days. But if you regularly check your online account, you can spot a suspicious charge the day it appears. You have 60 days to report billing errors, beyond that the credit card issuer could make you pay for purchases you never made. If you see the error more quickly, you are less likely to get stuck paying for fraudulent charges.

Con: Delay in Catching Credit Card Changes

If you set up automatic online payments, you might forget to read your statement each month. That means you won't receive an alert to changes in your minimum payment. If your minimum payment increases beyond the payment you’ve set, you’ll be hit with a late fee even if the payment is made on time.

Con: Email Address Change Notification

Just like you have to notify your credit card issuer when you change your mailing address, you should also update them with a new email address. Otherwise, you’ll miss the monthly notification that your billing statement is ready. You could also miss an email letting you know about suspected fraud on your account (but beware of phishing scams) or alerting you to other changes to your account, e.g., a credit limit increase.

Pay Online Without Paperless Billing

Even if you choose not to sign up for paperless billing, you can pay your account online either through your bank (if they offer online bill payment services) or directly to the credit card issuer through their website.