Thank you; good advice and something to think about. My logic is that if they are short on cash for rent, instead of making a late payment, they can put it on a credit card (I’ll leave the moral argument for others)and I get paid.
I am pretty new at this (two years) and am in a nice central oh college town and haven’t had disputes yet, keep my places nice, and figured that wouldn’t be a problem. The more I think about it, that is a naive and risky attitude.
I may still try it on a limited basis, but see if I can build in some protection. I am building a tennant web site and want on-line payment options. I am also hoping it will push communications and repair requests to an email/on-line format, as well as provide pictures of available properties to reference with paper adds.
I am going to start accepting credit card payments for rent from renters on line through Pay Pal. Are there any laws or anything prohibiting accepting rent payments with credit card? Thanks for your help.
There is no law that prohibits rent payments by credit card. Having said that there are some risks. A tenant may decide to dispute the rent payment with the cc company and until the dispute is settled you will be left holding the bag.
Instead of cc payments you could look into automatic EFT. This would give your tenants similar convenience and offer you more protection.