How to Encourage Your Tenants to Pay the Rent Online
Landlords continue to search for efficient ways to manage rent payment collections. The traditional way of collecting rent from tenants who pay in the form of a check may still be comfortable for some property owners, but this could also bring about some problems. Checks can get misplaced or lost on their way to you, or tenants may forget to hand over that check on the first day of the month, making you spend more time and effort to monitor their payments.
Fortunately, an online rent payment service can address many of the aforementioned problems and benefit landlords and tenants alike. However, even if a lot of tenants pay most of their bills online these days – like auto payments, cards and utilities – there are still some who hesitate to pay their biggest bill through the Internet. So, how can a landlord encourage tenants to do online rent payments?
Online Rental Payment Advantages
As earlier mentioned, receiving online rent payments takes out the middleman from the process: tenant to landlord to bank. Landlords no longer need to receive a check, file it to deposit later, go to the tenant’s record to mark the payment, sign checks to be deposited, fill out the bank deposit slip and go to the bank to deposit the money. All they have to do is get the payment in one click, then transfer the amount into your bank account with another click. Landlords can set up automatic payments for their tenants, linking their bank accounts to that of their tenants. Rather than wait for them to mail the rent check or drop it off, it will automatically be withdrawn from the bank account of the tenant and deposited into that of the landlord.
Online banking can also save a lot of time and money for tenants. They no longer need to fill out a check, mail it or drop it off. They just need to fill out some spaces online and permit payment, which only takes a few seconds and saves on stamp costs. When a landlord allows credit card payments, tenants can get major rewards from their credit card payments.
How to Encourage Online Rental Payment
A landlord can do a number of things to encourage tenants to pay their rent online.
First of all, see to it that the transaction is free of charge. This is very important. No matter how small an online fee would cost, people would not like to pay it. Make sure to stress that online bill pay is trouble-free and that includes fees, regardless of their amount. So, remove them totally.
Accept credit card payments. You might think that tenants that pay via credit card are spending more than they can afford, but as mentioned earlier, most people pay their bills with credit cards to earn reward points. Allow your tenants to pay rent with their credit card since they know they can have a free vacation by doing it. You will have a smooth sailing income while they get good credit evaluation.
Give incentives for online bill pay. You can give a discount on the monthly rent or a gift card. When you offer rewards and prizes, tenants will be willing to join. This way, tenants will have the habit of paying rent online and will never go back to the traditional way of paying rent.
