Real Estate Investor · Huntington Beach, CA · Member since 2008 · 221 posts · 9 votes
I've been thinking about a creating a direct deposit account to accept rent directly from tenant checking accounts to mine. I would have to give those tenants using direct deposit the account number. It would save everyone a great deal of time.
The bank says the arrangement is reasonably safe. Have any of you guys done this, and what are your experiences?
I've been using www.erentpayments.com for years, as have others on this site. Very safe, it's a double blind system that debits the tenant's account and deposits it into my business account. $3 per transaction, no contracts, no monthly minimums or set up fees.
I have 2 tenants that deposit their rent directly into my business account at the bank. Not through an ACH - they physically go to the bank and make a deposit. The business account is a deposit-only account. The tenant gets a receipt for the deposit but it does not show the balance in the account, only what they put in. No withdrawals. Been working perfectly fine for 6 years.
@Charlie B. It sounds like the Chase product is a good product. Sounds similar to Wells. I don't have a Chase near me, but the Wells seems to do the trick. $0.00 fee as well. Kind of a no-brainer to implement for those areas that are covered by these banks...
@Charlie B., I'm interested in Chase QuickPay. I've used it to pay vendors, but have been using www.erentpayment.com for my tenants to pay the rent online. There is a $3 transaction fee for each payment per month but excellent customer service and I can track what each tenant is doing, set up late fees, auto-reminders, etc. Does Quickpay offer that?
www.erentpayment.com does take 3 business days to clear the payment from the tenant's account to mine though, so if the tenant pays on a Friday, I may not get their rent until the following Wednesday. How long does Quickpay take to clear the payments? Thanks!
@Chris Martin. You are not reading the links that I provided nor are you reading the posts. We are talking about two DIFFERENT services provided by Google Wallet. YOU are not the "seller" in these scenarios. As I have stated many times it is free to receive money. This service is no different than the Chase Quickpay and others mentioned in this thread. I don't know any other way to explain this.....
My tenants started sending me payments through a site called WilliamPaid. Worked out, so I signed up for direct deposit. Haven't run into any issues yet. Not trying to promote that particular service, but I feel safer with that buffer and it's free. I don't have to give them any of my account numbers.
@Aly W. Quickpay displays all money sent and received, but there's no monitoring of the tenants. I'm not aware that you can auto include a late fee either. That would have to either be specifically included by tenant, or requested by landlord.
If you're both Chase customers it only takes a 24-48 hours. If they bank elsewhere it can take a little longer but I have not really paid attention to how long it takes. As long as the payment is in transit, we're happy. It hasn't been an exorbitant amount of time, but more than 3 days.
I do this: have a checking account that the tenants make deposits into for making rent payments. I get an e-mail every day of the balance and another e-mail for each transaction.
The bank told me it was unsafe to give out my account number to strangers. I mentioned that I send checks all over the world to pay bills and those people are strangers. And . . . . every single check has my account number on it - so how is it less safe that my tenants have my account number? <g>
stephen
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posted by Michael Siekerka:
. . . Depending on the types of tenants you have though, you may want to be careful. If they use your bank acct. info to set up auto billing or try to take funds out of it, you may incur an overdraft fee. It's not likely that this would happen, but it could be a problem with the wrong tenant.
My tenants all do direct deposit. Our clientele all do online banking so paying us through direct deposit is no different. It is part of our lease. I have yet to have some balk.
I have several tenants who transfer funds directly to my bank account. The only thing is that I open a bank account where my tenant banks because most banks allow customer to customer transfers through their online system. Once a month I consolidate all the payments into my main bank using online transfer from my bank. It's so easy.
@joe I give my tenants multiple options, none of which involve giving "their banking info." With a Business Deposit Card, they can pay in person at an ATM machine. No banking info revealed to landlord required. Or they can pay with true third party payment systems like eRentPayment.com or Intuit Payment Netowrk (and many others), and the accounts for each side of the transaction are isolated. No banking info revealed to landlord required.
From a technical perspectve, there is no need for a tenant to ever give their banking info to a landlord and vise versa. Also, these third party systems are very cost effective now. In my world, landlords need to just provide the method (the system) and let the tenant select what is most convenient for them. Some tenants have bank accounts, some don't. Whatever works for them. In the end, if the landlord sets good payment processes in place, the landlord gets paid with safe and effective systems.
@Mark Hu , we like things simple. We use Intuit's Payment Network system which charges only $.50 per transaction no matter the amount. There is no setup, monthly or cancellation fees so you can start and stop when you want.
There is no fee for the tenant and the money is pulled directly from their checking account. We setup monthly invoices that are automatically sent to the tenants every month so it's pretty mindless. The money gets deposited directly into our bank account so no need to go to mailbox and then to the bank to cash them.
The other cool thing is that it syncs up with Quickbooks so the process is seamless. You can't beat $.50/transaction. Let us know what you end up using.
So I have an account set up just for accepting deposits from one tenant. What do you do when they directly deposit the money to the account, but the rent is LATE? And they don't include the late fee?
I just signed up for a service called clearnow. it will set up monthly draft from tenants bank acct for rent. If you go to mr landlord and use their link you get the first 3 months free.
it appears the first tenant is $15 a month and the next are $3.
@Mark Hu , we like things simple. We use Intuit's Payment Network system which charges only $.50 per transaction no matter the amount. There is no setup, monthly or cancellation fees so you can start and stop when you want.
There is no fee for the tenant and the money is pulled directly from their checking account. We setup monthly invoices that are automatically sent to the tenants every month so it's pretty mindless. The money gets deposited directly into our bank account so no need to go to mailbox and then to the bank to cash them.
The other cool thing is that it syncs up with Quickbooks so the process is seamless. You can't beat $.50/transaction. Let us know what you end up using.
@Cuong Le, is there a monthly fee for the Intuit Payment Network service? I looked on the website and it didn't appear there was a fee. Does your bank charge you monthly for using this service?
Hi @Cuong Le: I am about to enter the world of rental property investments. I really like the idea of something that pulls from the tenant's bank account, rather than an ACH transaction. Could you provide more info on Intuit service?
I've been using www.erentpayments.com for years, as have others on this site. Very safe, it's a double blind system that debits the tenant's account and deposits it into my business account. $3 per transaction, no contracts, no monthly minimums or set up fees.
I have 2 tenants that deposit their rent directly into my business account at the bank. Not through an ACH - they physically go to the bank and make a deposit. The business account is a deposit-only account. The tenant gets a receipt for the deposit but it does not show the balance in the account, only what they put in. No withdrawals. Been working perfectly fine for 6 years.
I know you sent this reply 3 years ago, but I was curious as to how to know which tenant is depositing the money when they physically go to the bank and make the deposit. Is it simply that the rent amounts are different? What if they paid a late fee or something one month, so the normal amount is different. What if there was ever a question as to if they made the payment or not? You aren't really able to prove who made what deposits, so it seems confusing to me to know for sure who did what.
Yes, the cash deposit tenants pay different rent amounts now. One of the tenants always texts me when he makes the deposit. Another tenant that has been late occasionally has had to include the late fee in the deposit.
On the rare occasion I wasn't sure who made the deposit, I simply called both tenants who (at that time) had the same rent amount and asked if they made the deposit.