You can tag direct account payments with notes. So paying a bill or a school, you attach a note such as “payment for Pierres school trip” or “regarding invoice #1234”. Works pretty damn good here in Denmark.
I am probably trying to be too careful, it is just our tradition of chèques (which, again, I would like to see vanishing) which I now will be hard to get rid of.
We probably have the lowest online banking adoption in the world, people are attached to brick and mortar institutions which bring them nothing (I am fully online and when I ask some friends why they do not switch they do not have any rational reasons, except that they are in the same bank for 15 generations and like to pay the 10₠/month fee)
I will acknowledge, that this has also resulted in a large decline in brick and mortar bank branches. Some smaller cities, no longer have any bank, which can be/is a problem for some.
