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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

#31

Post by dsl »

tylergalpin wrote: post #6
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 lot of people find it's important to pay on a credit card especially if you're living month to month, or if you can afford to pay the fees you can get decent status with your card company. You're totally right though, $4.95/mo is more likely to happen (or send through your bank). We have some good value add over the bank because we're in the process of letting you build your credit history with successully paid ren…

Can you give some detail on how your merchant account is categorized? It looks like your product is a "cash equivalent" and probably not eligible for rewards points.

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

#34

Post by pessimizer »

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'm 40, have always lived in the US, and have never paid my rent in a way other than check. To take it even farther, I'm pretty sure I've written fewer than 100 checks in my entire life that weren't rent checks.

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

#36

Post by moheeb »

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?

The US does have this. I go online to my bank, put in a name and address, and they send the money. I've even scheduled it to send automatically every month.

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

#37

Post by tylergalpin »

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://…

We're working on the ability to use your successful rent payments to contribute to your credit score, which is a huge benefit for folks like me who have no established credit in the US (or bad credit).

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

#38

Post by toomuchtodo »

juantwo wrote: post #19
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FYI transaction costs are a percentage of the total charge. Plus interchange and all that crap. Without looking too far into this, I'm pretty sure debit transaction fees are ~1% which would be about $20 for my $2,000 rent.

"Overall, signature debit networks charged substantially higher fees, on a per-transaction basis (12.5 cents), than did PIN debit networks (5.7 cents), and the difference between these fees on a per-transaction basis widened in 2012."

http://i.imgur.com/3iu43vi.jpg

http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/regii-average-i...

"The Board's Regulation II provides that an issuer subject to the interchange fee standard (a covered issuer) may not receive an interchange fee that exceeds 21 cents plus 0.05 percent multiplied by the value of the transaction, plus a 1-cent fraud-prevention adjustment, if eligible. Transactions made using certain reloadable general-use prepaid cards and debit cards issued pursuant to government-administered payment programs are exempt from the interchange fee standard, even if the card is issued by a covered issuer."

Also:

http://www.cardfellow.com/blog/debit-card-transaction-fees/

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

#40

Post by eksith »

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…

They allow electronic payments for my apartment, but honestly in the US, that's very rare. Here, a check is the most acceptable way to pay for their mortgage/rent. Many people prefer it due a) A lack of an existing process to accept them (haven't setup through their bank yet) and b) A prevailing distrust of computers and the internet in general.

There are erroneous deductions that can happen if you don't keep an eye on automatic payments and there are horror stories of overbillings, overdrafts etc... so that scares away some people too.

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