Do your residents need renters insurance? Great news! RentPayment now offers your residents the ability to quickly sign up for a renter’s insurance policy, all online. All they need to do is login to their RentPayment account and click on the ePremium banner at the top of the page. From there renters can get a quote and sign up for an insurance policy in a matter of minutes.

What’s in it for property managers?

Getting all your residents to sign up for renters insurance and keeping track of all the policies can be a hassle.  Through the RentPayment ePremium insurance partnership, we are now able to provide access to ePremium’s IRIS software all for free. The web based IRIS software is an integrated platform for managing renter’s insurance policies whether they are all ePremium Insurance policies or not. It allows for easy policy tracking and monitoring, compliance alerts and a whole host of other features to benefit Property Managers. With this software you will have the tools to increase your resident’s participation in rental insurance and help avoid costly damage liabilities. To find out more information on getting your property setup with this free software, contact our Sales Team at Sales@RentPayment.com or call them directly at 866-289-5977 Option 4 for Sales.

RentPayment is now partnered with RentSocial, the multifamily housing industry’s first social media platform which allows properties to brand themselves in a unique way. Apartment shoppers and residents can visit RentSocial.com to get information on apartments, write and read reviews, view side by side property comparisons, collaborate with friends and meet their neighbors. RentSocial will help property managers make more informed business decisions and better understand their marketplace. Some of the features include:

• Qualified Leads
  -Ratings and reviews
  -Side by side comparisons
• Enhanced Resident Experience
  -Social interaction
  -Blogs and community updates
  -Submit maintenance requests and pay rent online
• Detailed analytics
  -How often your community has been viewed, reviewed and rated

Check out what others are saying about RentSocial!

• Chicago Tribune
• TechCrunch
• Multifamily Executive
• Mashable

We’re happy to share this news and look forward to working with RentSocial for many years to come. Contact Sales@RentSocial.com today about listing your property!

Introducing PayByCash – the newest payment option from RentPayment! With PayByCash your residents will have the ability to pay their rent with cash at any of 35,000 MoneyGram Agent locations nationwide including major retailers like Walmart. RentPayment already offers residents the option to pay their rent online, by phone and by text message with a debit card, credit card and eCheck. Now with the addition of PayByCash, paying rent is even more convenient for all of your residents! Get rid of unsafe money orders!

Benefits of Accepting Rent with Cash

1. No longer need to accept money orders
2. Safer and more secure way to accept cash
3. Residents without a credit card or bank account can still pay their rent electronically
4. Low resident service fee of $3.50 or less at any of the 35,000 MoneyGram agent locations
5. Bilingual payment solution- marketing available for Spanish speaking residents

Marketing Advantage  

• Free marketing collateral
• Brochures and cards in English and Spanish
• Free custom flyer creator which populates residents account information and the 3 closest MoneyGram agent locations to the property

For more information on PayByCash or to add this
option for your residents, contact our Sales Team at SalesTeam@RentPayment.com.

We kicked off this spring with a bang and offered one lucky resident a free month of rent! Meet the lucky winner Ryan Sullivan from Georgetown Apartments in St. Louis, MO.  

So what did Ryan have to say about RentPayment?

“RentPayment’s service makes paying rent a breeze. I love the ability to make my monthly payments online. I really like the paperless aspect of being able to use a credit or debit card. I usually pay online from my computer but I am excited to try out the RentByText feature next month!” Thanks Ryan and congratulations for being our Free Rent Promotion winner!

Want to reward your residents for paying their rent online and on time?

We can create a custom promotion campaign for your community to help encourage your residents to pay their rent electronically. Contact our RentPayment Promotions Team at Marketing@RentPayment.com for more information.

Over the past few months RentPayment’s Promotion Team has continued to offer residents a variety of promotional prizes for paying their rent online and on time with RentPayment! In February we rewarded 50 residents with $100 MasterCard gift cards for participating in our Super Bowl Gift Card Giveaway. To enter, residents paid their rent online and picked who they believed would be this year’s Super Bowl winner by using promo code TeamNFC or TeamAFC. Check out some of our Super Bowl Giveaway winners below!

We asked these residents: What do you love most about RentPayment?

“RentPayment has made my life a lot simpler! I can make a payment from anywhere, even my phone! Additionally, making a payment using the software is very simple! All apartment complexes should use the service!”
 Christopher W. – Naperville, IL

“RentPayment is very reliable and easy to use. It makes it easy to pay rent on time when traveling. Thank you so much for taking the worry out of paying rent. I highly recommend your service!!!”
 Hal L. – Houston, TX

“I like all of the promotions you do! If nothing else, they keep reminding me to pay my rent! Keep up the good work…I’ll be paying through you as long as I can!”
 Tommy H. – Cypress, TX

YapStone Inc. is proud to announce our acquisition of ParishPay, an industry leader in electronic donations for faith-based organizations. ParishPay is YapStone’s first acquisition in the non-profit scetor, where we can continue the trend of bringing efficient electronic payment technologies to historically offline industries. ParishPay has successfully processed hundreds of millions in electronic donations nationwide and will operate as a business division of YapStone out of its New York office. We are excited to welcome ParishPay and their partners to the YapStone family. For more information on the acquisition you can read the full article from the San Francisco Chronicle or for the full press release click here.

RentPayment and ePremium Insurance are excited to announce a partnership that will offer RentPayment users the ability to get a renters insurance policy online in less than 2 minutes. This exciting partnership will make acquiring renters insurance easier than ever for RentPayment users. What’s even better is that at no charge RentPayment property management clients will get access to a host of policy enrollment and compliance-enforcement tools through ePremium’s IRIS software application. This will make managing renter’s insurance policies easier and more efficient for property managers. To read more about this exciting partnership click here.

According to an FDIC study nearly 30% of Americans are unbanked or underbanked. Which breaks down to 7.7% of US households, approximately 9 million are unbanked and 17.9% of US households, approximately 21 million are underbanked. Unbanked households are those that don’t have any bank account and underbanked households are those that have a bank account but are not active in using the financial resources of their bank accounts. Another 4.1% are listed as having a bank account but their usage status is unknown. These numbers also drastically differ across regions of the country and different demographics.

These facts are especially interesting for all of the new growth opportunities in the US which these underbanked consumers represent. According to an independent Business Wire article it is estimated that there are more than 100 million unbanked consumers living in the United States today.

So you might ask how are these underbanked consumers navigating the mainstream financial world?

The study found that 66% of unbanked households utilize alternative financial services such as non-bank money orders, non-bank check cashing, pawn shops, and payday loans which can all be very expensive services. Another 25% of underbanked households don’t use any alternative financial services and rely heavily on cash.

These unbanked or underbanked populations represent a large portion of renters in the multi-family housing industry and can be a challenge for property managers. But they also represent a huge opportunity for growth. Finding ways to market your property to these potential residents and offering them a safe and secure way to pay their rent is crucial to attracting residents in certain markets. How many of your renters could take advantage of a safer and easier way to collect rent?

For more information on the unbanked population in the US visit FDIC’s National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households .

After a record year last year, YapStone Inc. is once again hiring! We are looking to extend our position in 2012 as our industry’s leader in electronic payments but we need your help.  We are hiring for variety of positions including careers in Engineering, Operations, Sales and Finance.

YapStone, Inc. is the largest Electronic Payments-as-a-Service (ePaaS) provider focused in property management and several other bill payment industries. YapStone’s payment service processes billions of dollars annually, with an on-demand platform that offers convenient Web-based and mobile technology to its clients. YapStone’s technology includes a unified, real-time reporting platform for check conversion, credit/debit card processing, and electronic check processing.

YapStone, Inc. has been named one of the fastest growing companies by both Inc. 5000 and the San Francisco Business Times. We pride ourselves on being an industry leader and a great place to work. Some perks our employees enjoy: Bagels/Donuts weekly, Pizza Lunch monthly, premium coffee daily, birthday cake monthly, catered lunches and parties for special events, company sponsored sports games and happy hours, picnics, employee recognition programs, etc.

For a full list of our current positions available, see below:

• Senior Revenue Accountant (Walnut Creek, CA)
• Senior Software Engineer (Walnut Creek or San Jose, CA)
• Software Engineer (Walnut Creek or San Jose, CA)
• Business Development Analyst (Santa Monica, CA)
• Marketing Intern (Walnut Creek, CA)
• Sales Operations Specialist (Walnut Creek, CA)
• Remote Training Specialist (Walnut Creek, CA)
• Executive Assistant (Walnut Creek, CA)
• StorageRentPayment Inside Sales Representative (Santa Monica, CA)
• Inside Sales Representative (Walnut Creek, CA or Santa Monica, CA)
• Client Care Representative (Walnut Creek, CA)

Think you have what it takes to join the YapStone team?
Send us your Resume/CV and cover letter to apply@rentpayment.com. 
Please include the position of interest in the subject line.

RentPayment’s Promotion Team has been offering residents a variety of promotional incentives and giveaways this holiday season. Last month, we launched our First 50 Promotion where the First 50 residents to pay their rent online had the opportunity to win a $50 MasterCard Gift Card courtesy of RentPayment. So who were the lucky winners?
Check out a few of them below!

This month we are offering residents the chance to participate in our Holiday Giveaway Spree where one resident has the chance to win a $1,000 MasterCard Gift Card to kick off 2012 and five additional residents will each receive a $100 MasterCard Gift Card for participating. The promotion has been a great success generating an extra 42,000 electronic rent payments from the select communities.

We asked these residents: Why do you use RentPayment?

• “It’s so much easier to not have to worry about writing a rent check and finding a stamp to mail it in. With the holidays it just gets too hectic!”
  Rick M. – Chicago, IL
• “I can pay from my iPhone anywhere in the world. You can’t beat that.”
  Julie T. – Gainesville, FL 
• “The 1st always seems to sneak up on me, especially around New Year’s. The rent reminder emails are perfect because I can click one link and then pay with my credit card.”
  Prasad K. – Houston, TX 

Congratulations to all our First 50 Promotion and Holiday Giveaway Spree winners and a big thanks to the property managers for all their efforts! If you’re interested in running a promotion for the residents at your property, email us at Marketing@RentPayment.com for more information.