If you weren’t sure of the adoption capabilities of cryptocurrency, there has been enough demand from Australians to use it to pay their rent that property tech company Rent.com.au (ASX: RNT) is going to facilitate rent payment from tenants as part of an upgrade to their RentPay app.
A one-stop-shop for all tenant related matters from searching listings, to making applications, paying rent and communicating with landlords, RentPay now has more than 10,000 registered users. Adoption of the app continues to be a key growth initiative of Rent which reported $853k revenue for the quarter ended 31 March 2022, a 7% increase on the previous corresponding quarter.
“The March quarter is typically our strongest quarter of the year, however we are still seeing a very tight rental market with vacancy rates are all time lows and listing volumes down over 30% from last year, so our results are all the more impressive given that context,” said Rent CEO, Greg Bader.
While revenue was up, net cash net outflows of $345k for the quarter were minimal with cash flow tipped to improve further with more downloads of the RentPay app converting to paying customers.
Over the March quarter, there was a 33% increase in app downloads to 18,650 with a 29% increase in paying customers to 2,649.
Responding to customer feedback in an effort to convert more users of the RentPay app, Rent is set to introduce a digital payments gateway that will enable tenants to pay their rent in cryptocurrency while landlords receive fiat AUD through their collaboration with digital payments company Novatti Group (ASX: NOV).
“We have also expanded our agreement with our payments partner, Novatti Group, to enable additional modern payment methods to make it easier for our customers,” said Bader.
“This includes accepting compliant secure payments from cryptocurrency exchanges and digital wallets such as Alipay, WeChat Pay and UnionPay.
“Accepting cryptocurrencies will be an exciting addition for RentPay. Novatti’s innovative solution will allow us to directly interface, in a compliant and secure manner, with several popular cryptocurrency exchanges to receive the funds in AUD, rather than carrying any exchange or timing risks.”
Since launching RentPay in 2020, more than $18 million in rental payments have been processed through the app which offers payment automation and flexible payment options to tenants.
Being able to pay their rent in cryptocurrency will be particularly attractive to millennials that have seen massive gains from their early adopter investments but lack options to offboard their capital gains.
Alfred Chan is an Analyst at Emerald Financial, specialising in ASX-listed small cap companies.
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