Interview With RadPad (Pay Rent With Credit/Debit Cards) CEO, Jonathan Eppers

RadPad is a website/phone application that aims to make the rental process easier, their main unique selling proposition is that each listing must have three high quality photos and their location search. At the moment they are live in Chicago, Los Angeles & Washington D.C. One of their latest features is the ability to pay your landlord with a debit or credit card. If you pay using a debit card then no fee is charged as long as your payment is $5,000 or less, credit card payments attract a fee of 2.99%. This is something we’ve covered before (here & here).

Their landlord payment service offers rent guarantee where if you payment arrives late they will cover any of the late fees. If your rent doesn’t arrive at all they will pay your full months rent, any late fees and refund your rent payment. They also just recently launched an Android app to go along with their Apple app. I had a few questions for the RadPad team, and their CEO (Jonathan Eppers) was kind enough to answer these for me.

The Interview

RadPad recently removed the fee for debit card usage, what prompted this change and is a fee likely to be readded for debit card usage in the feature?

We’re focused on getting as many renters paying their rent with RadPad as possible and making debit free helps us do that. We found that a lot of renters want to try paying with RadPad, but had a hard time justifying the $4.95 convenience fee we charged vs. just writing a check (which is free).

Part of the value that renters get for paying rent with RadPad is the payment history that they accrue every month that they pay on time. Paying rent on time is a very important piece of data landlords want to see when moving and right now, most renters have nothing to show in terms of a payment history. We’re hoping to change that by allowing renters to share their payment history when they apply for an apartment in the future.

Going forward, we’re going to do our best to keep debit free.

Is RadPad’s landlord payment system currently profitable?

Yes it is profitable. Our debit payer to credit payer ratio is higher than we anticipated.

How does RadPad handle tax liability for landlords? For example, will RadPad send out 1099s at tax time? If so, is there any thresholds (e.g under $20,000 is not reported)?

This is not something we are required to do so we will not be 1099’ing any landlords. We’re a marketplace that facilitates rent payments between renters and landlords and we view ourselves as outside the relationship between the renter & landlord.

What is RadPad’s team main focus at the moment? Is the landlord payment system where you see the majority of future growth coming from or is this just secondary service that is being used to attract new users for the app?

We’re focused on making renting easier for renters, which includes keeping renters engaged with RadPad even after they find an apartment. Most of our team rents, including myself, so we’re intimately aware of what we all hate about renting. There has been very little innovation in the rental market in last 25 years, and we see mobile + product execution as a huge opportunity to make renting better for renters and landlords.

Are there any future plans for RadPad that you can share with us?

We’re in a very competitive industry and several other companies in this market seem to imitate a lot of what we do (we’re flattered btw!). While we think one of our strengths is our ability to move fast and execute we’re pretty secretive about what we’re working on. I can share that we have a lot of product enhancements coming to Pay with RadPad, some of which will be releasing over the next several weeks. I can also share that while renters will continue being our priority, we will also start focusing more on landlords this year.

A few people have commented that the way some of the F.A.Q’s are written that one of the staff members must be a points & miles enthusiast, any truth to this?

Haha I’ve seen those comments too. There’s a little truth to it but not much. I used to travel for pleasure a lot before I started RadPad and am very familiar with using credit cards to accrue miles and points. The truth is we want to be very transparent with renters about how we view paying for rent with a credit card. Most renters didn’t have the option to pay their rent with a credit card before RadPad and we feel a great responsibility about this privilege. We want renters to have as much information available to them as possible about the pros and cons of using credit to pay rent while respecting that they’ll ultimately make the decision that’s best for them.

One last question, any ETA when split payments might be offered?

This is definitely on our road map. We think split payments is an important part of being able to pay the rent on time.

Final Thoughts

First of all thanks to Jonathan Eppers for taking the time to answer our questions and Jeffrey Bishop (VP, Marketing & Customer service) for facilitating it. The biggest shock to me was that their landlord payment system is currently profitable, I was under the impression that they were running it as a loss leader to attract new users to the app.

I live in one of their markets (Los Angeles) and while I no longer really rent, I have several friends who’ve used it to successfully find places to live. I think the system is a lot less clunky that something like Craigslist and it’s nice for the naturally curious as well (I wonder how much properties in this area rent for?).

The main selling point for most of this sites’ readers is the landlord payment system, if you have a rewards debit card it’s an easy way to rack up points, miles or cash back by paying your rent. It’s good to see that this will be sticking around and that split payments are on their way. The other positive is that they will not be issuing 1099’s or similar to landlords, which will be useful for people living in share houses for example.

If you haven’t already, check out their website or download the Android or iPhone apps onto your phones.