Urbanr is a new service that allows renters to pay their rent with a credit card. They charge a 1.5% fee and accept Visa, Discover & Mastercard. Property managers can also opt to pay a portion or all of this fee if they so choose. You’re also allowed to split your rent into up to three different cards per transaction. Unfortunately it looks like as a renter you can sign up for the service, but you have to invite your landlord to join and they must do this for the transaction to work.
The drawcard to competing services such as Plastiq, RadPad & RoomiPay is that your landlord doesn’t need to sign up. The services simply cut a check to your landlord. Urbanr deposits the rent directly, so if your landlord doesn’t sign up there is no way to process the transaction. Getting your landlord to sign up for a program like this is never easy, there is little added benefit for them (apart from maybe receiving payments on time more often) but maybe this requirement will make this 1.5% rate more sustainable long term.
VFTW has organized a sign up bonus for his readers as well, so head over to his post for more information on that. It’ll be interesting to see how these purchases code, what cards will earn at bonus rates?
