Does anyone collect rent using Venmo?

[Jacob Jeb]

Does anyone collect rent using Venmo? If so, how has your experience been using it?

Thanks!

[Stephen Groves]

I use Cash App, works great!

[John Hickey]

@Stephen Groves are there any downsides too it? I used it to receive rents from a tenant this week and I was thinking this is too good to be true.  No waiting BS receipts etc.  

[Stephen Groves]

No downsides that I can see.  I love getting rent that way, and I just deposit it straight into my rental checking account.  It's like a 2-3 day delay for the money to actually hit the account, unless you want to pay a small fee for an instant transfer.  

[Tina Husted]

@John Hickey wave.com is great!!! same idea but with much more. Same charge as Square and it keeps tract of all spending plus you can create an invoice if you want. Just create acct. Can put tenant name in for future billing and/or invoicing

[Account Closed]

@Jacob Jeb I use it for some tenants, the younger/college ones love it lol

[Mike McCarthy]

A number of my colleagues here use Venmo. They love it.

Venmo’s terms of service forbid it being used for commercial reasons... so there could be a issue at some point. As far as I know, I’ve never heard of that becoming an issue though. Just FYI

[PJ M.]

@Jacob Jeb the answer is "it depends'.  If you are thinking of using the Venmo that everyone uses to send money to friends/family then you are taking a risk.  Venmo clearly calls out that it is against their terms of service to use it for business transactions.  "Venmo may not otherwise be used to receive business, commercial or merchant transactions, meaning you CANNOT use Venmo to accept payment from (or send payment to) another user for a good or service."

https://help.venmo.com/hc/en-us/articles/217532097-Can-I-use-Venmo-to-buy-or-sell-merchandise-goods-or-services-

I wouldn't want to take the chance that the other party complains, or that Venmo catches wind of it and pulls money back because of transactions against their terms of service.  Venmo is going in to the business world, with their Venmo for Business offering, which only makes me think they will eventually start looking for those who are trying to skirt the system.  

[Michael Cocozza]

I use it.  Also use zelle, paypal, cashapp. Venmo is my favorite of the 4, because there are no practical limitations and no fees.  Zelle has limits, paypal inevitably has tenants sending as "goods and services" incurring fees, and cashapp has limits AND randomly connects to the wrong bank account on my end, which is a big hassle.  

[Russell Brazil]

Venmo, paypal, google pay.

[Nate Marshall]

As someone stated earlier it is against their terns of service for commercial purposes so maybe look at that for the future. You never want to have them hold your money. Sometimes it takes 2-3 months to get it released. If you want to still use it get Zelle and 1-2 other apps and then just alternate them.

[Connie Chan]

@Jacob Jeb I have landlord friends who use a lot of the common payment apps. Venmo, PayPal, cash app, etc. but I have advised all of them to switch to landlord specific software. There are indeed downsides to using the non-real estate options. Here are a few: 1) really hard for tracking and bookkeeping which means you won’t scale as easily -- also Venmo has a wIthdraw daily maximum, 2) can’t block partial payments which means hard to do an eviction in some cities, 3) can’t automatically enforce late fees which means you have to be the one checking if rent came in and go ask for late fees if not, 4) takes more time in the long run (When you’re doing taxes or having to remember each month if someone is late, the time really adds up). I use an app called Tellus that lets my tenants pay but it’s made for landlords so it addresses those issues above and I get a notification automatically if rent is late.

[Michael Lee]

@Jacob Jeb I would not recommend Venmo. There are a bunch of limits using it for rent collection. You have a cap on how much you can take out per week and you need to verify your accounts when you want to take out large amount of money. I'll say it's a good platform to transfer small amount of money between friends but it's definitely not the right option for rent collection. Agree with @Connie Chan, just start using Tellus and I've got no issues with my tenants so far. My tenants pay rent through the app on time and for free. Try it out!