PayProp reports continued rapid growth in instant EFT (electronic funds transfer) payments by residential rental tenants. In just the second month of offering instant EFT as a payment option, tenants are paying millions of Rands in monthly rent across hundreds of transactions, representing growth of 62% over October 2020.
By contrast, 90% of tenants are using ordinary EFT, 4% are paying by debit order, and 4.3% by cash. Since Absa, PayProp’s banking partner, decommissioned cheques in October, this method has fallen into disuse.
PayProp’s CEO Jan Davel says the company, which operates SA’s leading rental payment platform, merely bowed to the inevitable when it decided to offer their rental agency clients what tenants wanted. “It is popular because it is so easy and convenient, and above all, secure.” Ozow partners with a range of big-name brands like Uber, Vodacom and Takealot.
Another factor in tenants’ and other consumers’ large-scale adoption of Ozow’s technology is its ‘democratic’ accessibility to all banked South Africans. Ozow CEO Thomas Pays says this payment method leapfrogs others because it serves underbanked, previously disadvantaged sectors of society. “It bolsters financial and digital inclusion by enabling people who do not have credit or debit cards to shop online.”
How it works
When a provider like PayProp offers instant EFT, the tenant is invoiced electronically via e-mail and taken, for example, to PayProp’s Tenant Portal website. When they click the Instant EFT payment option, a popup window takes them to their online banking page and asks them to authenticate themselves in the normal way. In addition, Ozow PIN will shortly be available which provides the tenant with the additional convenience of not having to authenticate themselves with their username and password after the first login.
Davel explains that the communication between tenant and their bank occurs as it normally would. “Trusted EFT providers, like Ozow, act as a proxy between the payer and the bank to facilitate a faster and easier payment process for both the payer and payee. It couldn’t be easier or more secure.”
He adds that payment notifications are received instantly by the estate agent and payments are immediately credited to the right tenant and property using smart PayProp reconciliation technology, but outgoing payments are only made once PayProp has reconciled with its partner bank, Absa.
Ozow has processed billions in transactions since it was founded in 2014, with not a single incident of fraud. “The explosive growth of instant EFT as a payment method bears this out: previously ignored by the mainstream banks, an average of 20% of all e-commerce payments rely on this easy, fast and trusted means of payment,” says Pays.
“PayProp has processed over R66 billion in transactions since our own inception in 2004 and we are pleased that we can continue to offer our clients another safe and technologically leading service through Ozow,” says Davel.
