Rent.com.au Launches Heralded RentPay Platform

The Australian online marketplace company Rent.com.au has today launched its much-anticipated RentPay platform on the Apple Store and Google Play. The release represents a major step for the ASX-listed company which is increasingly looking to build loyalty and annuity in its customer base which until recently was mainly only interacting with the company via its portal and ancillary products when looking to move.

The platform which has been in development since early 2020 is designed to let tenants manage their rental payments via a digital wallet which they can set to fill up when they get paid, letting them add a buffer amount and even have access to 'safetyNet' funds. In paying their rent, the tenants also build up a reliability scoring which can help with referencing on future rentals. Tenant customers will also have access to all of their payment history and receipts on the newly built application which is payment-type agnostic meaning that tenants don't need to persuade landlords to sign up as well.

RentPay started out as a concept in the hands of accounting software firm AYOB before being bought by Rent in 2018. The development of the product started in earnest in early 2020 before being halted due to pandemic induced complications. Since then Rent has signed a deal with digital payments firm Novatti Group and raised fresh cash to help the development of RentPay with today's announcement seeing all the work come to fruition.

Speaking about his company's new product in a press release, CEO Greg Bader said:

"Our vision is to reimagine the renting experience to create Australia’s most empowered rental community and RentPay is a significant milestone towards that goal,”

“Our renter customers tell us of the frustrations they have with the rental experience and in many instances there is just no justification for things being the way they are. By listening to these concerns and being mindful of the needs of agents and landlords too, we believe we’ve developed the right solution whereby renters receive flexibility, support and improved financial wellbeing while agents and landlords receive their rent quickly and reliably."

“We’re excited by the opportunity RentPay provides to extend our relationship with our customer and also the transformational impact this is expected to have on the Company. Our original rent.com.au platform is now profitable and will continue to grow, and by adding the RentPay platform we are poised to significantly increase that growth. Our internal target is to achieve 200,000 paying RentPay customers by 30 June 2023, which equates to just under 10% market share. That is aggressive but we believe we can achieve that,”

Today's announcement is the third in a string of positive recent news stories for the Western Australian company. In February influential Australian investor Bevan Slattery invested in and publicly backed the company as part of a fundraising drive for RentPay. The backing saw the company's share price shoot up from $4 cents to $13 cents over the course of five days before going on to heights of $32 cents. Rent also announced a positive set of quarterly results at the end of April which saw record revenues as well as a third straight quarter of profitability for its core portal advertising business.