My apartment building uses Yapstone's RentPayment.com, which charges me a flat $24.95 fee to use my credit card. I wonder what they're doing to get around processor fees that RadPad isn't.
Negotiating?
Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required
41–50 of 54 posts
Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Have you lived in the USA? Checks are, as far as I can tell, still ubiquitous for rent payments here, and I've always used my bank's online bill pay feature for that. The same is true for utilities, although recently more of those have started supporting recurring credit card payments online.
To people in Europe (no idea if grandparent belongs to these), mailing around checks is just a ludicruous idea.
You whip out your strong-authentication-of-the-day device, do the magic bellydance (i.e., enter some numbers into that device, or scan something on the screen) and whoop, you just transfered a sum of money. To someone in a different European (SEPA) country. Without paying anything (except if you live in Italy and have a greedy bank). With the money coming in within two business days at their side.
And of course you have an option to perform monthly payments that way. Some landlords put it in the rent contract that the tenant has to use this method.
France was one of the last country to abandon checks. Why? Because everything is more efficient when it's electronic, and there is less forgery. (You can still send a wire transform via mail with a forged signature, but with these, you can usually go to the recipient and give them a hard time, which is harder with a check someone cashed out two days ago).
Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required
#43It 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.
Debit card is 0.22 + 0.05% transactions and this is only for large banks, the fee is set by law with the Durbin Amendment . Smaller banks aren't covered by the amendment and fees are higher, think the going rate is 1.65% and 0.15.
$2000 rent fees range $1.22 to $30. Think $5 is reasonable.
Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required
#44It 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.
Good point. This app would make more sense with bitcoin in order to avoid the fees, and would have several benefits over paying rent online through a bank (or over having to write a check by hand and mail it in). Some examples: 1) Instead of waiting 3 days for a bank transfer to clear (or for a check to go through the mail), you could pay your rent through an app like this in seconds using bitcoin (and not pay 3% for…
Dwolla might be a good alternative payment system for the app to support also, with a $0.25 processing fee for the transfer part of the fee.
Online billpay mailing a check for no fee still wins though.
Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required
#45Most 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://…
I love this kind of service - it allows me to pay my bills relatively automatically without giving the payee any of my banking information[1]. The fact that the paper check is a common interface makes this very easy (from my perspective). Just fill in a few fields and the bank (and the business I am paying) take care of the rest.
It's a push model for paying, vs a pull (where you set up auto-deduct).
[1] ok, yeah, it's right there on the check, but I get to sign off on the exact amount of the transaction.
Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required
#46Video seems in poor taste.
The video is a good demonstration on why you should use actual actors in startup promo videos.
Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paying your rent on a credit card if you're living month to month sounds like it is a recipe for some spiraling out of control consumer debt.
Sometimes your paycheck doesn't arrive on time to pay your rent, and paying on a credit card to absorb the fee temporarily is a viable option for some people. Paying with a credit card also isn't a requirement...just an option :)
Or get a line of credit. Or overdraft protection. Or in the worst case just take out a cash advance on your credit card for a few days.
3.25% off the top just to pay your rent is insane.
Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required
#48People still use cheques? Don't you guys over the pond have Direct Debits?
Not really. I tried send someone a large sum recently and my options were 3rd party payment sites (Paypal, Google Wallet etc), cash, or check. Direct transfers (ACH) do exist, but it's difficult to set up and so is usually between accounts owned by one person (bankbank, bankPaypal). Plus it takes 3-5 business days. I ended handing over a cashier's check.
Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required
#49Video seems in poor taste.
I try to root for the small guys to succeed. After watching that video I almost hope for a fail, and if that personifies the people behind the business, I can only imagine it certainly will.
Re: Pay your rent with a Credit or Debit card. No landlord signup required
#50People still use cheques? Don't you guys over the pond have Direct Debits?
The concept exists, but it requires the payee to actually set that up.