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# Bill Payments

The Upward Bill Payment feature allows you to make payments from a Consumer's internal bank account to any external bank account for the purpose of paying off a bill. This includes paying utility bills, phone bills, TV subscriptions, and internet services.

## Registering the Bill

The first step in making a bill payment is to register the bill instance. You will need to provide a name and bank account information for the originating and receiving bank accounts.

There are two internal IDs which must also be provided to the Register a Bill endpoint:

* `consumer_id`: the ID of the consumer to register this bill instance to
* `sending_account_id` the ID of the consumer's Upward Bank Account information

The default root API for registering a bill is `/v2/bill-pay/bills`

Example API Request:

```json
{
  "consumer_id": "8464ec61-2780-4b2a-bef0-6001e65ff94c",
  "sending_account_id": "6e90c978-0027-4fa2-8c3b-9d2f4e8d3c3b",
  "name": "Sunrise Apartments Rent",
  "receiver_name": "Jane Smith",
  "account_number": "345675643",
  "account_routing_number": "021000021"
}
```

You can view more information on Creating a bill instance [here](/api-access/api-reference/bill-pay/create-bill).

## Making a payment against a Bill

Once a Bill has been registered, a user can make payments against that bill. All that is required are an amount and a description.

The default root API for creating a payment for a registered bill is `/v2/bill-pay/bills/{bill_id}/payments`

```json
{
  "amount": 43.45,
  "description": "Monthly Rent Payment"
}
```

You can view more information on Creating a bill instance [here](/api-access/api-reference/bill-pay/create-bill-payment).