If you aren’t currently using social media to communicate with your residents I think you will be surprised to find how beneficial it can be. You can use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to maximize your community awareness, attract renters, and stay ahead of the marketing game. An easy way to encourage residents to pay their rent online is to post a link on your Facebook or Twitter page!

Tips for Rent Reminder Facebook Posts and Tweets

• Providing a link to take residents directly to your payment page will make it as easy as possible for them to pay instantly. 
• If you post a link to your properties login page, automatically generated text will appear.  Feel free to change this text and customize your message.
• When posting, point out the benefits of paying with a credit card or eCheck.  This can include: payment security, good for the environment, fast safe and easy, etc… 
• This is also a great place to remind residents of their payment options (eCheck, Credit Card, AutoPay, etc…)  and any payment fees that may apply at your property. 

For more information on social media tips email us at Marketing@RentPayment.com for a social media guide and a social media consultation. 

Ever forget your wallet and wish you could use your cell phone to pay for your daily cup of coffee? Those days have arrived. It’s 2012 and mobile payment technologies are booming, making payment transactions for residents faster and easier than ever. According to a Juniper Research study, it’s predicted that mobile payment users will grow by 40% to reach 2.5 billion globally by 2015. Payment transactions made through text messages continue to grow rapidly while other new mobile payment technologies and smartphone applications gain in popularity every month. Other mobile technologies, such as near field communication (NFC), allow people to make payments in stores, directly from their mobile phones quickly and securely.

With our lives mostly on the go these days it just makes sense to find ways for people to easily pay their rent. RentPayment has vowed to give renters a multitude of payment options including mobile payments with RentByText and our RentPayment Mobile iPhone App. Below is a video with more information on our mobile payment options:

Mobile payments help Property Managers Bridge the gap between technology and in person payments making them fast, easy, and secure. Properties see the benefits of accepting electronic payments for rent, including more on time payments, integrated accounting and higher closing rates on leases. Email us at Marketing@RentPayment.com to find out ways we can help get residents at your community making mobile payments today!

YapStone Inc., the parent company of RentPayment, is proud to announce we are now processing over $14 Million in electronic payments every day. With the recent acquisition of our largest competitor PropertyBridge Inc., YapStone Inc. has continued to grow as the largest electronic payments-as-a-service (ePaaS) provider for the property management industry, processing significantly more payment volume than any of our payment processing competitors. This astonishing number will only continue to grow in 2012, with our international expansion into residential markets overseas and our new product RentPaymentNow! which is designed for smaller single family residential property owners in the United States.  Matt Golis, CEO of YapStone, explains: “Our significant scale is a testament to our vertical focus and software-centric approach to the market. Unlike competitors who take more of a low tech, one-size-fits-all approach, our ePaaS software is designed with the customer in mind, adhering to the specific business rules of recurring bill payment industries. We believe this approach is a significant differentiator that will continue to drive revenue growth in 2012 and beyond.”

To view the entire article, in Payments Market, click here or for a link to the Press Release, click here.

Last month on the RentPayment blog we outlined some interesting Mult-Family Housing Industry facts. Our findings demonstrated a significant majority of rental properties happen to be smaller unit properties owned by individuals, rather than larger properties owned by property management companies. We also shared some ways we felt electronic rent acceptance could be of great benefit to individuals who own small unit properties and their residents.

RentPayment leads the electronic payment industry yet again …. Today (drum roll please), we are proud to announce a solution that will provide all U.S. renters with the rent payment flexibility they demand and provide individual property owners with an easy to use and value adding  service to accept credit, debit eCheck payments.  Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to announce this GREAT solution is RentPaymentNow!

RentPaymentNow! provides residential properties of all sizes the ability to apply online – in a couple easy steps – to process electronic payments. Within minutes these properties can begin accepting online rent payments! Prior to RentPaymentNow!, it was only feasible for large property management companies to assume the cost of transacting in the digital world. RentPaymentNow! introduces an affordable way to process credit card, debit card and eCheck for any residential rental property! 

Depending on what types of payments individual properties choose to accept, renters will have the option to pay rent with eChecks online, debit cards online, and credit cards over the phone, in-person AND via RentPayment’s innovative RentByText^TM service. RentPaymentNow! is more than your average online payment processor; it is opening the doors for individual property owners to grow their business like never before and to provide their residents with the flexibility and freedom they deserve when paying their rent each month.

So if you, or anyone you know owns or manages a property, visit RentPaymentNow! and follow our 4 easy steps to start accepting electronic payments NOW —it’s THAT easy.

How do you communicate with your renters? Communicating with residents in the digital age is quicker and easier than ever if you know how to capitalize on the available technological resources! According to CNET News, Americans now spend an average of 13 hours online a week, excluding email. Why not communciate with renters via these same channels? We bet you’ll have a much greater response. Consider using digital communication for rent reminders, community announcements, and maintenance requests, among other things.

Gathering Resident Emails: It’s as simple as requiring an email address at the time the lease is signed and requesting email addresses on rent checks, maintenance requests and forms, as well as using email as your preferred communication avenue. With an email, residents are able to open the message and take action immediately or at their convenience. This channel is also easy to use, considering you can reach all residents with one single email.

For your convenience, RentPayment offers customized email blasts for your community. If requested with ample time (usually one week in advance), we are able to build a payment reminder email that can reach your residents instantly. Please contact Marketing@RentPayment.com if you are interested in learning more.

Social Media Platforms: Tools such as Facebook and Twitter are a great way for residents to feel more connected to your property. If your renters are talking about your property – potential renters will as well. These outlets allow for two-way communication and for your residents to be more candid with you about their wants and needs.

Text Message Communication: With many people opting to forego landlines these days, cell phones have replaced them as the most common communication tool. Collecting phone numbers and confirming that residents do in fact receive text messages, is a great means of communication for short messages (usually under 160 character spaces). However, be cognizant and try and keep text messaging to a minimum and reserve it for important messages.

Video Sharing: Making video announcements and tutorials can be a fun and innovative way to share news and information with your residents. Videos can also be wonderful leasing tools. Looking for ways to energize or motivate your team? YouTube, Vimeo and Tout are a few of the websites that can be used to post videos on and the videos are fun to create as a team.

YouTube and Vimeo both allow you to create customized channels where all of your videos can be aggregated. You are able to brand these pages to your community and residents will be able to access new and older videos through a video library.

Tout is a new micro video website. Users can create 15-second videos from an iPhone or pull clips from a YouTube video. This is great for frequent and brief one-way communication with residents.

Everyone loves a good deal and it’s fair to say that if someone had the option to pay a lower price, they would, despite their economic situation.  In fact, a survey by RedPlum reported an overwhelming 96% of shoppers (of the 23,000 surveyed) claimed they would still use coupons even if they won the lottery! This “save when you spend” mentality has only become more prominent in our society since the onset of the most recent recession.  More people are spending additional time surfing the web for added discounts, free shipping, and promotions. NCH, a coupon processing and information management company, reports the overall coupon redemption volume in the United States grew 3.1% to 3.3 billion consumer good coupons, in the past year alone.

The digital age has definitely facilitated the process of the “deal hunt,” as online coupon usage is on the rise.  Naturally, online retailers of all sorts have had to jump on the bandwagon and start satisfying consumers’ need to save, increasing the number of digital coupon offers by 37% in 2011, as reported by the NCH.

RentPayment thinks it’s time for the multi-family housing industry to dive into the coupon craze and utilize online coupon codes.  We can now proudly say, we too have contributed to the 37% increase in the number of digital coupon offers in 2011! Our “Love at First Click” Student Housing promotion marked a new beginning for RentPayment promotions.

From here on out, be on the lookout for RentPayment coupon codes for your community’s residents.  They might just have the chance to enter one of our exciting promotions or sweepstakes and win amazing prizes or discounts, just for paying their rent online!

The internet has changed the way we do everything. It has completely transformed the way we conduct business, updated the way we shop and reinvented the way we communicate. Just as the internet has changed how we go about our daily lives, it also has changed the way residents search for a new rental property. According to the National Multi Housing Council, “more than 70 percent of renters begin their apartment search online, and many firms now report more than 50 percent of their leasing activity is coming from online sources.” This means that in order to stay ahead of the times, property managers need to be using the latest tools the internet has to offer to market to potential residents.

Internet Marketing Tips to Keep you Ahead of the Competition:

• Internet Listing Services (ILS) are a cost effective way of generating leads for your property and increasing your number of closed leases. Renters’ top three criteria for choosing an ILS are the number of properties listed, the amount of detailed information on each property, and the sites ease of use and functionality.
• Property Specific Websites are extremely important since potential renters will be checking for contact info, photos, floor plans and prices. Renters generally start their search on ILS but usually rely on property specific websites for more information when they narrow their search down.
• Detailed Lease Source Tracking is imperative to testing the success of your marketing channels. This will help you better plan future promotions by tracking which methods are closing the most leases.
• Call Centers provide additional resources to satisfy renters’ queries 24/7, offering communication channels online and by phone.  They are a great way to close leases by creating appointments with residents to come view your property. Lack of timely responses to phone and email inquiries are noted as the biggest reason for renter complaints and loss of potential leases.
• Search Engine Optimization can provide long lasting results for larger property management companies as it is great for turning leads into leases. However, it can take a long time for the effects to be measured and requires constant updating to your website content.
• Online Rent Collection is a great selling point to potential renters.  Advertising on your website that you accept ePayments with RentPayment will let potential residents know that you offer a wide variety of flexible payment options and it shows that your property is up on the latest technology to meet the current rental market’s payment demands.

Using a mix of these online marketing methods will help your business grow and convert more leads into leases. For more online marketing strategies, check out the NHMC’s White Paper: Multifamily Marketing in the Internet Age.

It’s no secret that collecting rent from residents can be a tedious and time consuming endeavor, especially when property managers use outdated or inefficient methods. Landlord.com and the Tenants Screening Blog have recently profiled some of the most outlandish and outdated rent collecting methods.  Here are some examples of the extreme lengths property managers have taken to collect rent in the multifamily housing industry. Luckily for you, all of these headaches can be avoided by transitioning your residents to electronic payments with RentPayment. 

• Filling out 12 Self-Addressed Envelopes for Every Unit: It’s safe to say that no property manager enjoys opening hundreds of envelopes each month.  However, the idea of having to make 12 self-addressed envelopes for each and every unit in your community seems completely inefficient and borderline humorous.  Property Managers should be able to focus their efforts on improving their community, acquiring new leases and streamlining their workflow, not self-addressing envelopes.
• Individual Bank Accounts for Every Unit: Imagine the headache of opening up a separate banking account for each unit and asking your residents to deposit the money directly into their specified account each month. Property managers that use this method have to confirm each unit has deposited the correct rent amount and on-time and open /close accounts whenever new leases are signed or old residents move out. This increases the property manager’s workload exponentially!  Why not integrate your accounting software with RentPayment and completely automate the process? We can even keep a payment record archive for all current and previous renters forever.
• Cash or Money Order Drop Boxes: Drop boxes have been known to increase the likelihood of theft and fraud in apartment communities. Methods to make drop boxes more secure have been passed around for years in the multifamily housing industry.  But the bottom line is that no external drop box is safe, and it could be a source of payment disputes over the amount of rent paid or incurred late fees.
• Creating a Monthly Bill for Every Unit: Besides that fact that you have to create and print individual monthly bills for every unit, someone has to deliver them. Skip the printing, save some trees and utilize electronic communication with your residents.  Residents at your property are able to sign onto their RentPayment account from any internet connection, 24/7 and see their account balance* or receive click pay reminder emails (another form of an invoice).  Another example of utilizing RentPayment’s marketing resources is in the form of custom eBlasts, that can be sent to your residents as a “Rent’s Due” reminder. *Available with most property management software integrations.
• Require 12 Post Dated Checks: This method involves having residents fill out 12 postdated checks upon first signing the lease.   By allowing credit card payments, residents are able to pay their rent even when they may not have the whole rent amount in their checking accounts.  Electronic payment solutions also allow residents to sign up for services like RentPayment’s AutoPay.  AutoPay is a recurring monthly debit from your checking account in the form of an eCheck, an electronic version of a paper check.
• Collecting Rent Door-to-Door: This method is as tedious as it sounds, and not to mention, dangerous. No property manager should have to deal with the confrontation that comes with knocking door to door to collect rent. This method could also result in payment disputes as there is no paper trail or better yet, e-trail.   

The benefits of electronic payment methods are clear; they save you both time and money.  Educate your residents on the benefits of electronic payments and start to enjoy the ease and convenience of collecting with RentPayment. 

For more information about your RentPayment services please contact CustomerService@RentPayment.com. 

For assistance with promoting RentPayment at your community feel free to contact Marketing@RentPayment.com.  Or CLICK HERE to learn more about RentPayment’s marketing advantage.

Mobile payments may be the new “big thing” in the payment industry, but because it is still a relatively new concept, it is extremely important that your mobile payment options are both safe and secure.  Due to the relatively recent adoption of mobile payments, there are currently no PCI Security Counsel standards for the mobile payment industry.  Although the payment industry has no official guidelines that enforce security and privacy of mobile payment users, the core PCI security standards in general, should be followed.  It is crucial to select a mobile payment processor that not only adapts these standards, but also goes a step further by implementing additional security features.  Fortunately for anyone that uses our mobile payment options, like our RentPayment mobile iPhone app, we have created a mobile payment solution which is both simple and secure, through the utilization of a critical security feature known as, tokenization.

Tokenization is a technique that must be applied to the mobile payment industry to ensure that a consumer’s credit card information is secure. It is a “best practice technology,” that in the multi-family housing industry alleviates the responsibility of the individual property from storing their renters’ credit card information.  Credit card information is stored through RentPayment rather than through the property management company, via an alphanumeric “token” that can only be used at RentPayment and serves as a substitute for the actual card data.  No token can be used twice; every time a new payment is made the information is stored under a new token, which is useless to anyone that tries to access it. At no time does a renter’s credit card information leave RentPayment’s secure system nor is the information ever stored locally on the user’s phone. 

Every time a renter wishes to make a payment, we access their information with the “token,” the payment is made, and their credit card information is stored with a new “token” or “key.” Not only does this process make mobile payments extremely secure, it also allows for a user friendly experience, since residents do not need to type in their information every time they wish to make a payment. 

 Some of our other mobile payment security features include:

1. Username and password login: Your renters create their own username and password to ensure no one besides them, can access their payment information.

2. Secure Channels: RentPayment uses digital certificates that encrypt data over a secure connection called a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) channel, preventing someone from listening in when the iPhone app is communicating with our servers.

3. Credit card and bank account validation: RentPayment always makes sure account numbers are valid and users’ account information matches with the issuing bank.

 Therefore, whether your residents like to pay their rent online, by phone, or by mobile application, you can always give them the guarantee that their payment is safe and sound with RentPayment. 

Want to learn more about tokenization? Check out this great visual explanation by one of our Software Architects, Xuyen On.

For more information about RentPayment’s mobile payment options, please click here.

RentPayment is proud and delighted to announce that we are a recipient of the Multi-Housing News’ Award for Best Resident Payment System.  According to Multi-Housing News, the winners of these awards were chosen based on four parameters: “companies who provide flexible customization, competitive pricing and the most innovative solutions, all backed by superior customer support.” 

MHN recognizes the importance of technology in the Multifamily and Apartment Industry.  Technology can not only improve day-to-day operational practices, but can help save time and money.  In particular, electronic payment technologies by RentPayment have helped to advance the industry as a whole.  As technology continues to evolve and meet industry demands, we certainly appreciate the recognition from MHN.

Read the full article HERE>>