Paying bills

I don't now for Hungary , but in Greece it's in cash or cart, no checks.

Correct, the concept of "personal checks" is completley unknown. No wonder with the low level of trust in the banking system and fellow Hungarians :-)
Oh, and cash is used in all the under-the-table transactions including most wages anyway, so there. (All Hungarians but the civil servants and employees of foreign companies earn minimal wage or are unemployed on paper...)

Paying with a credit/debit card at the post office is charged as cash withdrawal, don't do it!

What you can do however is set up a bank account with internet banking, and pay your bills by wire transfer. Simple, quick, safe.

You can even authorise the utility companies to do direct withdrawals from your account. Again, due to questionable billing practices, it's not too popular either.

It's easy. Utilities and companies send pre-printed forms which are processed by the giro system at the Post Office. True, you need cash to do it or a card. But it's not a big problem to get the cash out the ATM, then pay over the counter, then get the receipt. Works efficiently and without problems in my experience. Many countries do not have cheques/checks (whichever spelling one prefers).

Note that cheque payments are not the same as giro payments. With cheques, there's a clearing procedure where the person presenting the cheque has to wait to see if the money is there before receiving the money in their account. In the giro system, you present the cash with the payment slip so in that sense, it's prepaid. Therefore using giro is 100% safe for person waiting for the money (unless the Post Office goes bust....).

As most parts in developed Europe, checks are not used for payments, personally before moving to UK i had not seen a cheque in scandinavia for 25 years....

You can pay in post office, but no need to do it as all invoices can be paid by online banking as well. The only payment we do in post is the official car insurance as you can keep the receipt with the registration papers. Everything else we pay by online (no difference than e.g. scandinavia). Bank account you get in any bank in 15-20 minutes if you have passport, you don't need to be resident. For historical reasons (not to exceed 50k euro/bank account) we have several bank accounts in different banks but mainly use OTP as i have been happy with their costs and euro exchange rates.

Just to offset tomasc's pro-OTP sentiment:
While it is the largest bank in the country, in the half-hearted potato sack race of services, prices and comfort among banks, it can afford to lag back even more than its "competitors" due to the huge everything-inelastic captive market of pensioners. There are literally millions of OTP bank account holders without the clue about the existence of other banks.
Another downside is the same old people sitting in the bank offices in large numbers at all hours in hopes of a little chat with the tellers under the guise of renewing their 1 month investments.

I am not actually advertising OTP, however, i do find it very good especially in terms of euro exchange rate and online banking facilities,and also we have excellent service from our neighbourhood OTP - never have to queue (they always take us ahead of the queue, bank manager always finds time to come to say hello etc)  - although honestly i visit the bank only when i have to take significant amounts of cash (1M+), which means that it is less than once a month, sometimes once in a half a year, K&H is worst in terms of its customer service (at least the office in MOM park, absolutely dreadful, worst than state offices - but they have also typically competitive exchange rates) , citibank has good service as well, and great online banking but lousy exchange rates.

However, the bank service in the branches really does not matter too much as you very rarely have to visit any branch physically as you can do all your banking online, and if your cash needs are 250k or less in a day. Whether OTP is cheapest for other services, i don't know as for me most important was currency transactions. It is worth checking between banks, especially of course if you have specific needs.

fluffy2560 wrote:
Note that cheque payments are not the same as giro payments. With cheques, there's a clearing procedure where the person presenting the cheque has to wait to see if the money is there before receiving the money in their account. In the giro system, you present the cash with the payment slip so in that sense, it's prepaid. Therefore using giro is 100% safe for person waiting for the money (unless the Post Office goes bust....)

That's a cool description of the difference between giro and checks, fluffy.  Bet you worked for a bank in your previous life. I did a stint once working with those check processing machines. Those checks fly through the machines so quickly, you'd be surprised the funny kind of places they get caught up in, when the machine jams.  This might be another reason why people don't trust checks.

Don't mind paying my bills at the post office with bags of cash.  Paying for a big ticket item like car or house would have to be an oversize suitcase job, possibly with armed escort.  That would a little too conspicuous for me.  Though, could be a business opportunity there for someone, providing extra muscle and armaments for those serious kind of trips to the post office, or the lawyers office to sign deeds.

Seeing as personal checks are unheard of in Hungary, do banks offer such things as “bank checks” , where bank guarantees the check ?  Or are the banks as dodgy as the people who use them ?  This seems to be leading back to the giro system, as the safest store of value.  Checks are very much a way of life for some of us, here in France.  I can see this might take some getting used to.

I like the idea of setting up a bank account with internet banking and paying by wire, simple, quick and safe. No extra baggage required.  But, do Hungarian banks have easy-to-use English language web pages for their internet banking ?  That's not to say I wouldn't rule out the occasional trip to my friendly neighborhood post office, for some leisurely socializing, while waiting in the bill paying line with my little bag of cash.

logger wrote:

Paying for a big ticket item like car or house would have to be an oversize suitcase job, possibly with armed escort.

Some people do that for the benefit of untarceability, but those kind of people have muscle on payroll anyway :-)

Not sure about cars, but houses are regularly "sold" in the bank lobby, signing the contract uppon handover of some form of certificate about the wire transfer.

Especially if there is a bank loan involved (as is usually the case)

That's how we did it too.

All online banks i have been using (OTP, K&H, Reiffeisen, Citibank, etc) have english online banking, so don't worry about language.

Really unless you need extensive amount of cash (excess of 250k), there is never need to go to bank or post office to pay bills as you can handle cash needs with ATMs and bills with internet.

logger wrote:

That's a cool description of the difference between giro and checks, fluffy.  Bet you worked for a bank in your previous life.

Ah, well spotted. I did indeed work in a bank once or twice and had more than a passing interest on the technicalities. I don't work in a bank now but I have not moved far in finance industry terms. Still, I'd rather be doing hobby welding than cheque processing.