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Whether bills are included in rent? It depends on the rental contract.

Bills are normally paid online via receipt of e faktura (electronic invoice).  You need to request for this service by logging online and looking for the company you are paying.  Most bills are paid this way because they will charge admin fee if you want to receive a physical invoice.  the admin fees is approximately 50kr per physical invoice.

This type of payment is good because that means you don't have to worry about invoices lost in mail etc.  In addition, you can schedule your payment in your pending payment for the invoice so that you are never late for payment.

Need a Norwegian  bank account and Personal Id number. Both to get a bank account and to operate it. DNB are usually more helpful than Nordea.  Most bills are done via electronic transfer  with an amount, account number and a KID number (on the bill). No charge for these actions. Efacturers are unreliable and end up costing you money in fines and late fees when they dont work. I dont use them as you get charged for the banks mistakes. Post office payments can be made in cash but there is a hefty fee. I have had cash 100,000 kr stolen by post office workers pretending to pay money in for some bills. In the Kodal post office Trust no one, get recepts for everything. I find most nowrgians will happily fleece foreigners at any opportunity. They wont hesitate to find a reason to extract money from you  be it on a personal or commercial level.  And organisations are happy to lie to you, defend it with beauraucracy to ensure you pay more than you need to.
For funds from abroad western union is by far the cheapest with direct to bank transfer.

xsdev wrote:

Need a Norwegian  bank account and Personal Id number. Both to get a bank account and to operate it. DNB are usually more helpful than Nordea.  Most bills are done via electronic transfer  with an amount, account number and a KID number (on the bill). No charge for these actions. Efacturers are unreliable and end up costing you money in fines and late fees when they dont work. I dont use them as you get charged for the banks mistakes. Post office payments can be made in cash but there is a hefty fee. I have had cash 100,000 kr stolen by post office workers pretending to pay money in for some bills. In the Kodal post office Trust no one, get recepts for everything. I find most nowrgians will happily fleece foreigners at any opportunity. They wont hesitate to find a reason to extract money from you  be it on a personal or commercial level.  And organisations are happy to lie to you, defend it with beauraucracy to ensure you pay more than you need to.
For funds from abroad western union is by far the cheapest with direct to bank transfer.

That is interesting because I never had a problem paying efaktura and all my bills are paid via efaktura.  Then again, I always check my invoices and track my monthly payments.  So far so good, cross my fingers, I have not had unpleasant experience.

my friend once told me that her father did some research of exchange rates and found that paypal offers the best rates.  I am unsure if it is still true now.  But transferwise seem to be very popular among the foreigners for cheap rates.

I personally still use interbank transfer because I am just too worried about my money lost in transit.

Paying bills in Norway:

You normally don't pay Your bills With cash. And checks are not in use anymore. Every bill is normally paid online With Your bank, called "nettbank" (meaning online bank).

This could be done in Three ways:

You pay every bill manually by plotting in account number, amount and a KID or a message. This has to be done With every bill every time, usually every month.

You pay With eFaktura. This is also a manually way to pay, but you get a message by SMS or email when you receive a bill (you don't get a paper bill in Your mailbox). All the numbers related to the bill are already plotted in and ready for you to approve in "nettbank".

The easiest way is by "AvtaleGiro" (meaning bill agreement). You have to sign an agreement With every recipient/bill issuer. It's easily done in "nettbank" and only have to be done once for each recipient. Then you get a message, usually by email, a few days up front. The bill is then automaticly payed on due date. If you don't have enough fund on Your account the bill is not paid. The bank will try several days in a row, but eventually the bill will be unpaid if you don't have enough funds. Then you will recieve a pay reminder from the bill issuer. And you have to deal With the payment manually. If it is a regularly payment, the next mont will be payd automaticly as normal.