CRED RentPay Review: Paying rent has never been this easy & rewarding

The need for liquidity is at an all time high and consumers are facing what is termed the ‘cash crunch’. In light of this, CRED has rolled out their RentPay service enabling their members to now pay rent by directly transferring the amount to their landlord using their credit card and UPI. Here’s everything you need to know,

What is CRED?

CRED is a member only app reserved for the few having very good credit score (750 and above). It allows you to pay all your credit card bills from a single place and you get rewarded for it as well.

I’ve personally got well over Rs.25,000 worth of benefits since its launch in late 2018. The detailed review of the app is here: CRED Review just incase if you’re new to it.

What is RentPay?

RentPay is one of the latest product by CRED built exclusively for its members as a solution for rent payments.

It allows you to pay your rent through credit card in a simple 3-step hassle free process.

It is not only the most user friendly app for rent payments, but also comes with many other benefits with it.

Benefits of RentPay

• Credit Card Rewards: Most premium & super premium credit cards comes with a reward rate of 2% and above, sometimes as good as 3.3% in which case, you earn something back on every rupee you spend.
• Milestone Spend Rewards: While you get default rewards as above, you may also be eligible for the credit card milestone benefits which could be different types like Spend based milestone benefit, inbuilt milestone benefit or even the milestone benefits like fee waiver.
• CRED Coins: Apart from credit card rewards, you also get CRED coins for paying credit card bills.
• Credit Period: You get ~45 day credit period from credit card companies to clear the due.

That’s not everything, as you may also get many other indirect benefits once you frequently spend & repay the rent dues on time using a credit card. Like, chances are you get better spend based offers, better credit limit & you may score that upgrade you always wanted.

And of-course as these repayments are reported to CIBIL and other credit reporting agencies, so your score could get better, means better interest rates on your home/car loans that you might take in future.

Charges

• Service Charge (Credit Card): Upto 1.5% (including GST)
• Service Charge (UPI): Nil

Service charges are nothing but the charges added to rent amount while paying via CRED RentPay. These are basically the transaction fee charged by the payment gateways.

It appears that the service charge remains at above levels even for Amex & Diners, which is a good news. And no charge for UPI is nice to see as well.

While you might wonder how some service providers are doing at a low service charge, its because they’re in the user acquisition phase. Eventually everyone will have to come to this range, sooner or later.

How much can I save?

How much you can save ideally depends on which credit card you hold. Assuming you’ve monthly rent of Rs.30K, let’s figure out the potential net savings (actual rewards value – service charge) in a year across various cards.

• HDFC Infinia / HDFC Diners Black: Rs.6480 (as Reward points, usable for any hotel/flight redemptions)
• Vistara Signature: ~Rs.8,500 (2 Premium Economy tickets, considering each ticket at 7K)
• SBI Prime: ~Rs.2000 (Pizza Hut Vouchers as quarterly milestones + Fee waiver)

So, as you see, it highly depends on what card you use. Above are some mix of various premium, super premium & airline cards optimized for spends of Rs.3.6L a year.

But you’re going to have other spends as well on the card, so it makes sense to calculate your total annual spend and choose a credit card that gives you maximum value on your total spends (regular spends + Rent Payments).

Do check out the best credit cards in 2020 for complete list of premium and super premium credit cards that you can use to maximize your net savings according to your needs.

How to use it?

RentPay has an incredibly easy to use interface and is very straightforward. Paying rent is a quick 3 step process as below,

1. Just enter the amount you wish to pay.
2. Enter details of your landlord. You can add a landlord bank account with UPI as well.
3. Add your address for which you’re paying rent and you are done. The rent gets instantly transferred

All of the above can be done in a minute or two max and you don’t need to waste time uploading the rent agreements, wait for activations etc. Its all instant. Here’s the flow of entire rent payment process in pictures:

Eligibility

• You just need to be a CRED member with Credit Score > 750

Even-though RentPay is eligible for all CRED members, it went live only for select members for now. Its expected to be rolled out for “all” in a phased manner, in coming “weeks”.

However, do note that you need their latest app (with a redesigned UI) for you to avail the service. If eligible, you should be able to see the same on your CRED app’s home screen.

So if you’re using the old version, go ahead and update it. Or, if you do not have the CRED app yet, here’s the download link.

Bottomline

• Cardexpert Rating: 4.2/5

While there are other services as well that allow you to pay your rent via Credit Card with attractive transaction charges, the smooth 3-step rent transfer is hard to find.

Its just like Android vs Apple: when apple implements a feature, it feels mind blowing to use it, but well that comes at a premium and so CRED’s RentPay.

But then, it shouldn’t matter as long as you hold one or many of the premium or super premium credit cards in the country that rewards you more than the fee charged.

Hopefully CRED will come out with auto-pay rent option on Credit Card as well along with payment of other expenses such as maintenance and rent deposit. These bigger expenses shifting to Credit Card will help get more points, more liquidity, more interest free period!

Have you tried the Rentpay by CRED? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.