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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

#51

Post by scrollaway »

chc wrote: post #29
scrollaway wrote: post #10

Earlier 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…

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.

Hilarious. Payment collection fee for ... something that is easier and doesn't require collection? Than a cheque, which does require both collection and deposit, and isn't immediate, and, and ...

This sounds even more pathetic than those sad businesses having "handling fee" surcharges for getting your bills online. As if there was actually a secretary typing all those numbers into excel and uploading them to the website manually.

My god do I hate artificial difficulty.

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

#52

Post by scrollaway »

sqrt17 wrote: post #42
baddox wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ita…

I have indeed lived in europe and what sounds ludicrous to me is that people not only have to deal with this but accept it as the norm. What the hell do landlords get out of this? The joy of having to run to the bank every xth of the month?

I don't know about you but my bank is more like a public toilet than a bakery. I wouldn't go there unless there was an emergency, and even if there was I'd consider a dark alley over it.

(brought to you by the Department of drawn out metaphors)

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

#53

Post by technojunkie »

If I make an assumption of why using checks is still common in the US, it's for a few reasons stated here.

1. NO FEES. There are no fees associated with checks, unless you post your mail with a stamp. Otherwise, it's the most cost effective way even if it's classical.

2. Credit card transactions means landlord loses ~2.9% on every transaction. This adds up over time and rent prices go up.

3. Auto bill pay means getting someone's bank account number, which requires complete trust. Yes, contracts can be signed and such but so many people do not use contracts if they live with roommates. In California, my experience of signing a legitimate contract just to live with other roommates (usually plural) is basically zero. The ones who require it are large corporations, apartment complex owners who do background checks (again, which I've never had) and stingy landlords.

4. Many owners still use legacy systems which are not automated to keep track of transactions, thus having physical and tangible check or cash makes it easier for them to keep track of this. We don't have common, online repository set up for these small-time complex owners to move to. They're used to the way they do things and won't change.

Overall, it's more cost-effective to collect checks, continue using legacy system and avoid transaction fees by using checks or even cash.

Oh, one other thing, if you have an American bank account and want to send money for free, try Chase QuickPay. You don't even need a Chase bank account to do this! http://chase.com/quickpay

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