collecting rent digitally through "Cozy.com"

[Roman Gwin]

I've read a few articles describing the benefit of using a 3rd party like "cozy.com" to collect rents from tenants...one benefit being my routing and account number aren't given to tenants for direct deposit which can evidently lead to issues down the road...however, the main benefit being that a tenant can stall an eviction by direct depositing a portion of the rent owed into my account, thereby, nullifying the eviction process and having to start over since I "accepted" partial payment.  So my question is, does anyone use cozy and is it legitimate?  It's asking for some very private information on-line and before I hand over debit/checking info with security codes and billing addresses I'd like to make sure folks on this forum have used it and have not gotten ripped off...thanks!!!

[Kyle J.]

I use Cozy, as do quite a few other people on BP.  I like it and definitely haven't gotten ripped off.  For rent collection purposes, it's super easy to use because once you and the tenant set it up you don't have to touch it again.  It just automatically withdraws the rent from the tenant's account each month and then transfers it to your account.  Best of all it's free.  It does take about 6 days for the money to show up in my account, but that's not a big deal to me.  If it is to you, they now have an express payment option that costs $2.99 and shortens the length of time to get the money in your account.  I haven't used that service though.