Is Your Online Rent Collection Platform Tenant Friendly?

Let’s be honest. Keeping track of that monthly rent check can be a huge pain — for renters and landlords. As a landlord, on-time rent collection is one of your biggest responsibilities, and your job can become much more difficult if rent isn’t collected on time. Though there are many ways to collect rent — from online payments to the old-school method of sending a check in the mail or dropping it in a designated rent box — landlords must consider their tenants and their own needs when choosing a rent collection method. If you’ve never heard of online rent collection, it’s a secure collection method that massively ups the convenience factor for both landlord and tenant. There are many online rent collection platforms out there these days, as tenant-friendly online rent collection is becoming the new norm in the industry.

What Are the Benefits of Tenant-Friendly Online Rent Collection?

The best part of tenant-friendly online rent collection is that it has many benefits for landlords and makes rent payment easier for tenants. Let’s look at a few of the distinct benefits of tenant-friendly online rent collection.

Easy to Use for Both Landlord and Tenant

Being user-friendly is a major priority during the development of online rent collection platforms. Even landlords and tenants who aren’t great with technology can learn to use these platforms without a steep learning curve. Additionally, there are plenty of online resources and FAQs available for every major platform if you have questions.

Reduce Bank Transfer Costs

If you typically collect rent through bank transfer, you’re familiar with the small fees that the bank will collect during the transaction. Though these fees seem small, they can add up month after month. Reduced or even eliminated bank transfer costs are a major bonus for landlords regarding tenant-friendly online rent collection.  

Convenient

You can’t beat the convenience of online transactions, especially on platforms that can save your credit card and banking information for future use or even set up automatically scheduled payments.

Many online rent collection platforms send reminders straight to the tenant’s smartphone or computer, making it easy for them to remember to pay rent on time. Additionally, online payments can successfully transfer within minutes, which makes rent collection easier and faster for both the tenant and landlord.

Improves the Relationship Between Tenant and Landlord

Tenant-landlord relationships aren’t always smooth sailing, especially in situations where the tenant has been consistently late on payments or is breaking the agreement of their lease in some way. 

Though both the tenant and the landlord have to maintain a continuous line of communication to support a positive working relationship, tenant-friendly online rent collection can encourage more on-time rent payments, easing the tension between the renter and landlord.

Guarantees Security

Rent drops and payments sent through the mail can be tampered with, stolen, or lost. Though theft can happen in the online environment as well, tenant-friendly online rent collection platforms have multiple safeguards in place to ensure that the funds transferred through their system are kept secure. 

These safeguards also extend to any personal information saved within the platform, including your or your tenant’s name, address, and credit card information.

On-Time Payment Credit Reports

The best tenant-friendly online rent collection platforms have added features in addition to easy rent transfer. One of these is the ability of your tenants to view their updated credit reports as soon as they pay on time, which can be an incredibly useful tool for financial planning.

Incentives for Early Pay and Low-Interest Rent Payment Loans

One of the best ways to encourage on-time rent payments from your tenants is to introduce payment incentives. One of the best incentives is an early-bird payment discount, which could be as minimal as a small percentage of the total balance but still encourages your tenants to pay early for their benefit.

Ease of Payment from Anywhere

Sometimes life events can make it difficult for both landlords and tenants to drop off or collect a physical rent check in the right place at the right time. This is when online rent collection is handy, making it convenient and easy to pay or collect rent from anywhere in the world.