At least 1.2m rent payments each month are made on the platforms<\/a> in Australia, typically at the instruction of property managers and often with an extra transaction fee.<\/p>\n After the Reserve Bank\u2019s ban on surcharging <\/a>from 1 October, the rent-tech platform OurProperty told Guardian Australia it had stopped accepting direct card payments across the country.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n OurProperty\u2019s founder, Russell Burstow, said it previously charged a 1.95% surcharge. It would now route payments through Pay4it, a platform Burstow founded in August which charged its own 1.95% \u201cservice fees\u201d.<\/p>\n Burstow said OurProperty passed the cost on to tenants as the alternatives were to lift costs of real estate agencies or stop accepting cards, which he said would put customers who relied on credit cards into rental arrears.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no way that the agency would absorb that sort of money,\u201d Burstow said. \u201cThey would just pass it on to the landlord, who would just push the rent up.\u201d<\/p>\n Burstow said OurProperty and Pay4it were not making more money out of the new arrangements and would start losing money unless the Visa and Mastercard networks dropped their processing fees.<\/p>\n Victoria will outright ban rental providers and real estate agents from charging people fees to pay their rent or submit tenancy applications later this month, after prohibiting rent-tech companies from doing so in March.<\/p>\n In that state, OurProperty will introduce a new system of \u201cmemberships\u201d on Tuesday. It will waive the \u201cservice fees\u201d associated with paying by card via Pay4it for tenants who take out a \u201cplatinum\u201d membership, which costs 1.95% of their monthly rent.<\/p>\n Curtis Thomson, the chief executive of OurProperty, said the Victorian memberships included new app features and did not replace old card surcharges.<\/p>\n He said Victorian tenants would by default be granted a \u201csilver\u201d membership, meaning their real estate agency would have to cover the fees it charged for direct debit and automated bank transfer. Direct debit and automated transfer will still incur fees on OurProperty outside Victoria.<\/p>\n A Melbourne tenant using the platform, Hazel Kearns-Rees, said she was first notified on Thursday that she would have to opt out of her new membership.<\/p>\n \u201cThe framing of the costs as memberships \u2026 and the fact that all free options are made to be deliberately very difficult and inconvenient feels pretty unethical,\u201d Kearns-Rees said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ways that they are making it specifically difficult to make a fee-free rent payment is really disgusting, especially in a cost-of-living crisis<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Seek advice first<\/p>\n The loss of card surcharging has upended rental payments as businesses find alternatives or workarounds to avoid footing the transaction cost themselves.<\/p>\n Another platform, Ailo, has also swapped card surcharges for paid memberships. Ben White, the company\u2019s founder, said customers would be paying the same or less overall and fee-free options had not changed.<\/p>\n The biggest platform, DEFT, has blocked debit and credit cards altogether. Its owner, Macquarie Bank, said card accounted for just 2% of the 1.2m rent payments it processed each month and tenants could still pay via BPAY, direct debit and PayID.<\/p>\n![\"Newsroom](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791838812_333_1919.jpg\")
Newsroom edition: House prices in Australia are falling \u2013 will it hurt Labor? \u2013 Full Story podcast<\/p>\n
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