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May 10, 2007
Rent on Credit/Debit
Have any landlords tried allowing or required tenants to pay their monthly rent on credit cards or debited rent payments directly from their checking accounts? Pros and cons?
Comments
Seems like a cool idea! Maybe you could set something up through Paypal?
Posted by: Anonymous at May 10, 2007 1:13 PM
Downside for the landlord is the 2 to 3% fee to be paid for credit card or paypal processing. direct debit from account will run you 1.5% or so depending on bank. if you can get the tenant to pay for your fee - great. otherwise they are earning their reward points out of your pocket...
Posted by: gary at May 10, 2007 2:45 PM
i use paypal to accept rent, it's from the tenant's bank directly, so there's no CC fees. it's nice, but you do have to wait a few days for it to process. to me it beats having to lug around checks.
Posted by: Jimmy Legs at May 10, 2007 3:02 PM
I'd be wary of accepting credit card payments. If you get into a dispute, tenant can try to do a chargeback through the credit card company.
Posted by: Anonymous at May 10, 2007 3:04 PM
I use PayPal to collect my rent too. How do you avoid the 2.9% + $0.30 USD fee?
Posted by: Anonymous at May 10, 2007 3:54 PM
i don't know!
actually, i think the trick is my tenant has a paypal account which is also connected to his bank account, so he just transfers the money from one to the other. fees appear to come in when the sender uses a debit card, which i think paypal thinks of the same as a credit card.
Posted by: Jimmy Legs at May 10, 2007 4:19 PM
Aaaahhh. Got it. Thanks for the info.
Posted by: Anonymous at May 10, 2007 4:43 PM
you may want to check with your bank to see if you can do an automatic withdrawl/deposit. I personally would have loved it as a renter if my rent magically came out of my bank account every month without having to think about it. My current bank acutally encourages electronic payments. all i need is the sender/recievers account and routing #'s. Not debit/credit, but still not electronic.
Posted by: Anonymous at May 10, 2007 5:13 PM
whoops, I meant still electronic.
Posted by: Anonymous at May 10, 2007 5:14 PM
All good tips thanks. My primary concern is the dependability of the payment coming in. It seems to me that a small percentage fee would beat having to chase someone for the rent or levying a late fee.
Posted by: anonymous at May 10, 2007 5:38 PM
There are two services I found doing online research that set up the credit card or direct debit for you, but they look like they are for big management companies more than for someone who has a single rental unit. Do folks use these services as well, or does everyone just go with PayPal?
Posted by: anonymous at May 10, 2007 5:43 PM
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