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Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required

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Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required

#21

Post by Eiriksmal »

grecy wrote: post #9

The use of checks baffles me. I'm 32 and have lived my life in Australia and Canada, have never had a check book and never needed/wanted one. To pay rent, bills, send money to friends/family and other similar items, I put a name and bank account number into my internet banking and setup a scheduled transfer every month. It's free, and it works irrelevant of who is with what bank. Why doesn't the US have this?

That's a great question. Only one of my four landlords accepted electronic payments. The others wanted checks. One of those, tragically, demanded that the monthly rent check be dropped into his real estate office's mailbox. shudder

Since buying a house, I now only write checks to my church. Everything else (mortgage, insurances, cell phone bill, utilities, internet) is either automated by systems owned by the provider, or the old-skool, bank-mails-a-check-to-the-inlaws-to-pay-the-wife's-phone-bill-each-month method.

Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required

#22

Post by dsl »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5
derwiki wrote: post #3

It costs 3.25%, or $74.25 for the example of $2300. So if you're looking to just rack up "reward points", you'd be best pumping through a payment processor that takes a smaller cut. $5/month for debit is more reasonable, but my bank will mail my rent check for free.

A debit transaction only costs 15-70 cents for the processor. $5 is gouging-level. EDIT: change 15-30 to 15-70 cents based on additional information provided in response below.

The other $4.70 goes to paying for the helicopter and hot girl they rented for the promo video.

Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required

#23

Post by Crito »

scrollaway wrote: post #10
fireworks10 wrote: post #8

Most major banks offer a service called 'bill pay' which does this for free, directly from your checking account. Your bank first tries to pay the receiver electronically if they are in the banks network (most utility or other major companies would likely be in-network), and if they aren't in network or if they are just a person and not a company, then the service sends them a physical check in the mail. [1] https://…

Is this a thing? In every country I've lived in, cheques are not only universally hated by landlords and tenants, but all banks offer recurring payments available online (no matter whether the payee is "in the network", you just need the account number and some other piece of data depending on the country). My rent has been paid automatically ever since I was old enough to have a rent, and I never paid a cent for the…

I have never heard of a landlord in the US that does not accept checks. Many only accept checks (or probably cash if you offered it), particularly non-corporate landlords.

My current (corporate) landlord accepts checks or direct deposit, but not credit or debit.

Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required

#24

Post by thenipper »

scrollaway wrote: post #10
fireworks10 wrote: post #8

Most major banks offer a service called 'bill pay' which does this for free, directly from your checking account. Your bank first tries to pay the receiver electronically if they are in the banks network (most utility or other major companies would likely be in-network), and if they aren't in network or if they are just a person and not a company, then the service sends them a physical check in the mail. [1] https://…

Is this a thing? In every country I've lived in, cheques are not only universally hated by landlords and tenants, but all banks offer recurring payments available online (no matter whether the payee is "in the network", you just need the account number and some other piece of data depending on the country). My rent has been paid automatically ever since I was old enough to have a rent, and I never paid a cent for the…

It really feels like a company injecting themselves into a workflow where there are already totally usable alternatives. Plus they get themselves a handy pool of potential clients of all the landlords they send checks to.

Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required

#27

Post by refurb »

grecy wrote: post #9

The use of checks baffles me. I'm 32 and have lived my life in Australia and Canada, have never had a check book and never needed/wanted one. To pay rent, bills, send money to friends/family and other similar items, I put a name and bank account number into my internet banking and setup a scheduled transfer every month. It's free, and it works irrelevant of who is with what bank. Why doesn't the US have this?

It's starting to.

I noticed that when I lived in Canada, banks tend to pick up on technology pretty quickly compared to the US. I assumed that was because the Canadian banking industry is dominated by 5 (or is it 6) massive banks while the US has a few massive banks, then tons of smaller regional banks.

When a bank offers something new in Canada, the rest follow suit pretty quickly or they lose customers. In the US there just isn't the same competitive pressures. Or so my theory goes.

Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required

#28

Post by mamurphy »

>It's just $4.95/month for Debit and 3.25% for Credit.

Writing and mailing a check is worth the $4.50 price difference to me. But if it isn't to you, this may be a good deal.

Looks like this is a recent add-on to their previous apartment listing/finding service.

Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required

#29

Post by chc »

scrollaway wrote: post #10
fireworks10 wrote: post #8

Most major banks offer a service called 'bill pay' which does this for free, directly from your checking account. Your bank first tries to pay the receiver electronically if they are in the banks network (most utility or other major companies would likely be in-network), and if they aren't in network or if they are just a person and not a company, then the service sends them a physical check in the mail. [1] https://…

Is this a thing? In every country I've lived in, cheques are not only universally hated by landlords and tenants, but all banks offer recurring payments available online (no matter whether the payee is "in the network", you just need the account number and some other piece of data depending on the country). My rent has been paid automatically ever since I was old enough to have a rent, and I never paid a cent for the…

Check is the standard method of paying rent in the US. Many apartments are getting onboard with online rent payments, but it's still not really standard. My last apartment was check-only. My current apartment complex has online payment, but there's a ton of surcharges (payment collection fee, convenience fee, etc.) adding up to about $50 if you pay online.

Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required

#30

Post by baddox »

hayksaakian wrote: post #14
grecy wrote: post #9

The use of checks baffles me. I'm 32 and have lived my life in Australia and Canada, have never had a check book and never needed/wanted one. To pay rent, bills, send money to friends/family and other similar items, I put a name and bank account number into my internet banking and setup a scheduled transfer every month. It's free, and it works irrelevant of who is with what bank. Why doesn't the US have this?

All US banks I have used have had this for at least the past 5 years. I would say its cultural reasons keeping people on checks.

This has been my experience as well, although there is usually a nominal (around $5) fee for transferring from one bank to another. Bank of America transfers are free to another BoA customer. Online bill pay, which falls back to checks if necessary (but doesn't require the payer to deal with checks), is free through BoA.
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