The cheapest way to collect rent online is a bank debit (ACH): Stripe’s published rate is 0.8% capped at $5, against about $58 for a card on a $2,000 rent. Zelle and personal Venmo or PayPal payments can cost nothing, but they leave you matching payments to tenants by hand and give you no tie between the money and the lease.
Do this arithmetic on your own rent roll before you decide anything. Take your monthly rent, multiply by 0.029, add 30 cents. That is the card cost per payment at Stripe’s published US rate. Now take the smaller of 0.8 percent of the rent or $5.00. That is the ACH cost.
On a $2,000 unit those come to about $58.30 and $5.00. Over twelve months, $700 against $60.
Every common way to collect rent, compared
Fees below are the providers’ published US rates, checked on their own pages in October 2026.
| Method | Fee | Who pays it | Money arrives | Record you keep | Reversal risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paper check | none from a processor | nobody | after you deposit it, plus any hold your bank puts on it | the check image on your bank statement | the check can bounce |
| Cash | none | nobody | on the spot | only the receipt you write | none, but “I paid you” disputes are hard to settle |
| Zelle | typically none (confirm with your bank) | nobody | typically within minutes | a line on each bank statement | a payment to an enrolled recipient cannot be canceled |
| Venmo, personal payment | none from bank, debit, or balance; 3% if the tenant uses a credit card | the tenant, on a credit card | in the app now; 1 to 3 business days to your bank, or 1.75% for instant | app history, not tied to a unit or lease | set by Venmo’s rules |
| Venmo, goods and services | 2.99% (1.9% + $0.10 on a business profile) | you | same as above | app history | set by Venmo’s rules |
| PayPal, friends and family | none from balance or bank; 2.90% plus a fixed fee from a card | the tenant, on a card | in the account now; standard bank withdrawal is free, instant is 1.75% | account history | set by PayPal’s rules |
| PayPal, goods and services | 2.99% | you | same as above | account history | set by PayPal’s rules |
| ACH bank debit (Stripe) | 0.8%, capped at $5.00 | you | up to 4 business days on standard settlement | tied to the invoice it paid | disputes up to 60 days on a personal account |
| Card (Stripe) | 2.9% plus 30 cents | you | confirmed immediately | tied to the invoice it paid | card chargebacks |
So which one has no fees?
Check, cash, and Zelle, and Venmo or PayPal when the tenant pays from a bank balance as a personal payment. None of them costs a processing fee. The cost shows up somewhere else.
- Zelle is fast and cannot be pulled back once it lands, which suits a landlord. Zelle’s own advice is to send money only to people you know and trust, and every payment is a line on a bank statement you match to a tenant by hand.
- Venmo and PayPal cost nothing until someone marks the payment as goods and services or pays with a card. Then it is 2.99% to you or 3% to your tenant. The record lives in an app, not next to the lease.
- Check and cash cost a trip and a deposit, and cash leaves nothing behind but a receipt.
With ACH through LeaseRooster, your tenant pays no fee at all. You pay Stripe’s bank debit rate, 0.8% and never more than $5, and the payment lands on the invoice it belongs to. That is the closest thing to free online rent that still keeps a clean record.
Where the money actually goes
Rent runs from the tenant to the landlord’s connected Stripe account, and LeaseRooster never holds the funds. Processing fees come off that flow, which means the landlord’s connected account carries them unless the landlord passes them to the tenant.
That is the first real decision, and it is not only an economic one. California bars a retailer in a sales, service, or lease transaction from imposing a surcharge on a consumer who chooses to pay by credit card, while allowing a discount offered to all buyers for paying another way (Cal. Civ. Code § 1748.1). Whether and how that reaches a residential rent payment is a question for your attorney, and other states and cities have their own rules. Check yours before adding anything to a rent charge.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules change and local ordinances vary. Confirm current requirements with your city, county, or an attorney before you act.
The full comparison, not just the rate
Cost is the loudest difference. It is not the only one.
| Card | ACH bank debit | |
|---|---|---|
| Published US rate | 2.9% plus 30 cents | 0.8%, capped at $5.00 |
| Cost on $2,000 rent | about $58.30 | $5.00 |
| Confirmation | immediate | up to 4 business days on standard settlement |
| Reversal window | chargeback rules, months long | disputes up to 60 calendar days on a personal account |
| Setup for the tenant | card number | bank login or microdeposit verification |
Two rows there deserve more than a line.
Confirmation is not settlement. An ACH debit that reports success can still fail afterward, and when it does the funds come back out. Stripe’s own documentation describes standard ACH settlement as four business days and notes that a failure can arrive after a payment has already moved to succeeded. Rent that shows as received on the second and reverses on the sixth is a bookkeeping event you want to be ready for, which is why a payment can be shown as clearing rather than cleared until the window closes.
The reversal windows are different animals. A card chargeback runs through a long, contested process. An ACH dispute on a personal account can be filed for up to 60 calendar days and, per Stripe’s documentation, is final with no appeal. Neither is common on rent. Both are worth knowing about before it happens the first time.
So why take cards at all?
Three reasons hold up.
The first is the tenant who has no usable bank account or refuses to connect one. Turning off cards turns that tenant into a paper check, and a paper check has its own costs: the trip, the deposit, the reconstruction of who paid what in a dispute.
The second is the first payment. Move-in money is often the largest single amount a tenant will ever send you, and it frequently has to clear on a specific day. Card confirmation is immediate.
The third is simple friction. A tenant who is late because setting up a bank connection was annoying is a solvable problem, and the solvable version costs $58.
What does not hold up is taking cards by default on every recurring monthly payment because nobody ever changed the setting. That is the $700 a year version.
A policy that fits most small portfolios
- Make bank debit the default for recurring monthly rent.
- Allow card for the first payment, where speed and certainty are worth more than the fee.
- Settle the surcharge question with your attorney, once, before you write anything about it into a lease. In California the starting point is that surcharging a card is barred while a discount for paying another way is not.
- Push autopay hard. The cheapest payment is the one nobody has to chase. Automating rent reminders and late fees covers how the reminders and the enrollment fit together.
If you want cards off entirely, that is a supported choice: bank debit stays available and card can be turned off for a company. Just make the trade knowingly rather than discovering it when a tenant cannot pay on the first.
What this changes in your books
Fees are an expense, and on a small portfolio they are a visible one. Card fees on ten units at $2,000 a month come to about $6,996 a year at the published rate, which is real money against a small portfolio’s margin.
Two things worth doing at the same time you set the payment policy. Record the processing fee as its own expense line rather than netting it against rent, so the number stays visible at tax time: tracking vendor invoices and repair costs makes the same argument about repairs. And check what your total software and payment stack actually costs per unit, which the property management cost calculator will do with your own numbers.
The rates quoted above are each provider’s published US rates as of October 2026. Processors change pricing. Re-check yours before building a budget on a number from a blog post, this one included.