Avoid bank/online convenience fees w/ rent payment?

Question

Hi! How do you all avoid having yourself or your tenant pay any convenience fees for any transactions made online? I know there's Venmo and that's one way but any others? For example, someone who might not have Venmo? Trying to avoid tenants paying with check since that can get lost in the mail, bounce, take longer to receive etc.... I don't want to have to pay the convenience fee and I don't want tenants to have to either. Curious how you all work it, in that regard. Thanks!!

Bill B. · Answer

The tenant can go in to their bank and ask for an ACH form. They will out their info, you will out yours, and the money magically appears in your account on the first without any fees to you or your tenant.

David M. · Answer

@Clareen Eberly

While all these alternatives to checks are great, one thing that I haven't heard addressed is in the case where you are trying to evict for nonpayment of rent.  There is no way that I know of to not accept payment.  Otherwise, they could send you $1 and that will throw off your eviction proceedings.

Just something to think about...

Nathan Gesner · Answer

There are so many ways. If your bank is local, give the Tenant deposit slips and they can deliver payment directly to your bank.

Janice R. · Answer

I use erentpayment.com which has a setting to block any partial payments- plus the tenant cannot pay the current month unless the previous monthly rent was paid.

I've been using erentpayment.com for numerous tenants for about 8 years without any problems.  I pay the $3 per month fee for the tenant (you can split it or have the tenant pay for it). It does take about 5 to 7 days to get the money to my account though.

Hope that helps!

Clareen Eberly · Answer

Thanks all for the suggestions! Very helpful!

Alecia Loveless · Answer

@Clareen Eberly I use a couple of the free apps like Venmo, Cash App and Facebook Pay. Starting this year those Apps will be reporting all the large amounts to the IRS so it just shouldn’t matter if you use them legally unless someone can chargeback their rent somehow on one of them. Or make a partial payment and leave you not paid in full.

That hasn’t happened to me and if it did I’d cut them off from the App the next month and if they didn’t pay in full again I’d start the eviction process.

On Venmo and Cash App there’s a 2-3 day transfer option that’s free. Or an instant transfer option that charges a small fee.

With my check paying tenants they typically post their checks the 4th playing the game that it’s on time then even though I’m supposed to receive it by the 5th i usually don’t get them until the 7th.

Zachary Ware · Answer

As @Time Miller said, I would recommend using ACH. If you have a business checking account, you should be able to setup ACH payments directly from your tenants account.

Tim Miller · Answer

There's soo many reason not to use Venmo and Zelle. These are business transactions and you can get into trouble for saying they are not. There are a few online services that do not charge the tenant or landlord for ACH payment processing. We use Innago as it service us the best but it does charge $2 for ACH. $2 isn't going to break the bank.

You can setup with Zillow or Apartments.com neither of these charge for ACH processing. Good luck.

Avoid bank/online convenience fees w/ rent payment?

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