What are you’re experiences accepting those forms of rent payments?

I am almost done turning my primary residence into my first rental and was thing of accepting those forms of payment ( plus a service charge). Or do I use something like Rentredi?

Any insight will be greatly appreciated.

@Isaac Curiel

I use all of those services to accept rent but I find the cash app to be the best, hands down.

As long as it is convenient and on time it's all good. The only thing I don't accept is cash.

@Isaac Curiel

I use Venmo and love it. If a tenant hasn’t heard of it, usually they are easily persuaded when I mention how it keeps a receipt basically of all payments which protects them. Most tenants like that added security and convenience.

Any payment method that can be done by credit card opens the possibility of a charge back so that is very risky. I’ve also personally been hired to help a landlord in an eviction where the old property manager accepted Venmo and the records were doctored on the Venmo proof submitted to the court by the tenant and the judge actually bought the tenants fake records and it took six months on appeal with an attorney because that manager allowed that. It is much better to use a proper payment processing system for tenants or to have the tenants pay you by certified funds or check.

I accept venmo, google pay, and paypal.

@Isaac Curiel

I don’t use any of those services. I use Cozy. The reason I don’t use those services is that I’m not aware of any way to block or prevent a tenant from making a payment to you. That only becomes an issue during an eviction scenario. In California, once you serve a tenant a 3 day notice to pay rent, any acceptance of rent starts the process over.

So here’s a nightmare scenario: you serve a 3 day notice, then on day 3 the tenant makes a $1 Venmo payment to you. The clock starts over and you have to re-serve a new 3 day notice.

If you can’t turn off a payment source, I wouldn’t use it.

@Isaac Curiel I do Venmo, cash app and zelle.....going good so far

I've used Cash app for awhile now to take rents and it works great, much better than taking a check.

I appreciate all insights and feed back. Thanks guys. 

Cash App, hands down. Cozy can take up to 8-10 days if the holidays line up bad(happens a lot). It's the only service that's processed as a true cash transaction (i.e., as hard as cash for the tenant to charge back). ACH rules, which Venmo and Cozy use, allows pull back up to 60 days. This is particular an issue if the tenant pays by credit card on their end. Cash App only allows debit cards. It deposits next day even when Cash App says it will be 2 or 3 days.

@Isaac Curiel , all of those solutions work perfectly fine.  Especially if you only have 1 rental.  I used to use Venmo for several rentals.

My recommendation would be using landlord software that's based on the same technology as Venmo, but provide additional tools as well on the same platform.  Makes life easier as a landlord.  Although tenants typically prefer Venmo because that's what they're used to socially with friends.

I used to do my best to make everything easier for the tenants: paying, moving in/out, etc.  That's when I would accept Zelle or Venmo.  Unfortunately I've been burned enough now and realize it's important to put myself first.  I enjoy simplicity much more these days.

@Isaac Curiel - Kenny has the right idea here! There are definitely a lot of helpful tools out there; ***a lot of people use Zelle or Venmo, but they’re not designed specifically for rent collection. Some would suggest TenantCloud, Tellius or other apps which allow you to process rent collection; but, there is an option out there which allows you to collect rent much quicker than those others but still provides other rental management tools you might find valuable (again, not to knock Cozy or these other tools like Zillow rental manager - which admittedly is newer so they still have to iron out all of the kinks), but you can easily keep track of who paid what and on which date with a tool that is reliable and fast. It definitely can help to make the process as painless as possible and more efficient for both parties (landlord + tenant), and also offers digital leases. Again, you may run into transfer limits with some of those other apps which aren't necessarily designed for the purpose of rent collection but the right landlord software can make this seamless for you. I would love to learn about any additional needs; definitely helps to keep landlord solution providers on their toes!

I counsel clients and also take my own advice.....CHECK ONLY.  Let me explain.  Without current bank account information, you could be left out in the cold should you need to attach a bank account for money owed.  All of the services mentioned do not give you any assistance in that situation!  Anyone without a bank account (checking) is an iffy prospect anyway.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Most of our tenants manually deposit their rent into one of our bank accounts. It's instant and can't bounce or be disputed.

I use Zelle, PayPal and CashApp. I love all 3 but they’re not perfect 

Zelle is a free service and is great but only provided by major banks so not everyone has access to it. Rent posts to your account within 24 hours

PayPal is also free but sometimes the tenant can be restricted by the amount they can send/pay in one transaction/day. Rent posts to your account within 24 hours

CashApp is also free... well, sort of. If you use the free option, you get your money 3 days later. If you want the money within 24 hours, you’ll have to pay a fee ( the amount of the fee changes based on the amount of money you are receiving- a certain percentage  of it)

Zelle requires no action on your part when you receive the money. PayPal asks, if you accept it. Cash app requires a couple of steps to tell them what to do with the money. So if you are busy and do nothing, the money won’t be transferred to your account. You do get a notification from all of them that money is coming your way.

Zelle simply due to the volume of payments & the $$ amounts due.

@issac Curiel You CAN block a person on cash app! Click on their profile, click on the 3 dots on upper right corner of screen, then block! FYI :)

@Isaac Curiel

I use Venmo, it's great! I even pay my contractors with it. Only downside is when you transfer rent received from Venmo to your bank account, it takes a couple days to clear. 

I have been using Venmo to collect rent from people I rent rooms to in my house. It worked fine for a while, but I recently had my account frozen. My PayPal was frozen the same day. I think it’s because I sent money to a guy in another state to put a deposit down on a room I’ll be renting when I move. Either that or it’s because I’ve been collecting rent on venmo, which is technically not allowed. It’s not supposed to be used for business transactions. I’m switching to cash app and zelle. I think they both allow business transactions 

No downsides that I can see on these apps. I love getting rent that way, and I just deposit it straight into my rental checking account. It's like a 2-3 day delay for the money to actually hit the account, unless you want to pay a small fee for an instant transfer.

@Isaac Curiel  As far as I know, for Venmo, you will require a business account to collect rent, since by using a personal account, you are in direct violation of their User Agreements. Also, through the use of a business account, you're likely to encounter fees to collect these payments.

Originally posted by @Sharlene Mulchandani :

@Isaac Curiel As far as I know, for Venmo, you will require a business account to collect rent, since by using a personal account, you are in direct violation of their User Agreements. Also, through the use of a business account, you're likely to encounter fees to collect these payments.

Thank you.