News and insights from the Ingo team.

The property management sector thrives on a constant flurry of financial activity. Landlords employ and contract with a variety of vendors and suppliers to keep their property grounds maintained, the sinks and toilets unclogged, and everything running smoothly. Tenant turnover demands an endless to-do list of repainting rooms, removing scuff marks from floors, and cleaning carpets. And everyone, from plumbers and groundskeepers, to HVAC companies and movers, needs to get paid. That said, traditional vendor payments in property management are long overdue due for a digital makeover. Digital push payments for property management and services have already become a reality for thousands of companies., including platforms like AppFolio. And this is just the beginning. To stay on top of property management financial services, it’s imperative to understand push payments and how they might work for your business.  What Are Push Payments? So, let’s get started. To understand push payments, let’s first define what a traditional pull payment is. Pull payments are payments initiated by any payee where a company “pulls” requested funds from a payee’s account.  Pull payments can be an integral part of running a recurring payment system. Think monthly rent payments: with pull payments, your residents don’t need to remember to write a check each month, and you don’t need to remind them that rent is due.  Push payments do the same work, in reverse, allowing the payer to initiate the transfer of funds into a payee’s account and giving both parties more control over the payment process. Push payments are faster, allowing the payer to immediately transfer the funds to the recipient’s account. There are many types of push payments, depending on where the payment is going and the speed with which it is delivered—to bank accounts by debit card (called “push to debit”), by ACH and RTP transfer, the new FedNow and to digital wallets. The Trend Towards Real-Time Across Verticals The property market’s trend towards real-time push payments mirrors a wider marketplace change. Many markets are moving away from the slower rails and paper, especially for ad hoc payments. And the stage is set for an even wider embrace of instant payments. For example, studies show that when a push to debit instant payment option is offered, in comparison to a traditional payment method, people go for it. Across Ingo’s client base, push to debit payments currently account for between 40% to 70% of overall transactions where they are offered.  Even industries like trucking and movement logistics have seen a significant shift towards digital wallets and instant push payments. Their adoption of these instant payments has significantly streamlined complex interactions and financial management across their distributors, warehouses, carriers, brokers and beyond.  Additionally, the rise of the gig economy through apps like DoorDash and Uber has spurred key adoption of instant payments for freelance invoicing. This shift has helped numerous companies retain their best contractors and increased gig work satisfaction.  These are just a few examples. Broadly speaking, the world is trending toward fast, digital transactions with instant push payments at the forefront—in property management, related verticals, and beyond.  Specific Benefits Property Managers Push payments, like push to debit, has specific benefits for property management companies, especially in streamlining vendor payment capabilities. Before instant payments, a property manager had to juggle and keep track of multiple invoices, vendors, and check numbers. With push to debit, property managers can instantly pay vendors directly into debit accounts when work is done, decreasing delays and avoiding the “out of sight, out of mind” headache that comes with non-instant payments.  This speed is also useful in financial planning for property managers and vendors alike, because managers aren’t left wondering when a vendor will cash their checks, and vendors don’t have to worry about when the business will get around to sending it. Win-win. Beyond speed, push payments offer a reduced risk of fraud for property managers. Why? Because the payer initiates the transaction, and the payee does not have access to the payer’s bank account information. This compartmentalization reduces potential data breaches and keeps sensitive information more secure.  Push payments are also simply easier. They can be made anytime, anywhere. The process is straightforward and user-friendly for both sides. With just a few clicks on a mobile app, managers send money and vendors get paid.  Less Redundancy, More Reliability Digital connectivity for instant money transacting has always been relatively simple. An API is an API. But it’s the other pieces to the payments equation—from connecting sponsor banks and managing risk and fraud, to the ongoing management, optimization, enablement of low-cost routing, redundancy and ubiquity that are the real contributing factors to the overall complexity of payments—and differentiating factors with push payments.  As a business begins to operate and expand, transactions multiply. The availability of push payments in lieu of more traditional methods not only speeds up payments themselves but also reduces reliance on paper checks and the crisscrossing of invoices and approvals, or else the three-day wait for ACH transactions to settle. This alleviates cash flow issues and visibility for handymen, electricians, lawn care firms, regional suppliers and anyone else who previously had to deal with receipt tracking and reimbursements. Closing The Gap For Property Management Payments Significant progress has already been made in residents embracing digital channels (using their debit cards) to pay monthly rent. As individual consumers, we’ve grown familiar with peer-to-peer (P2P) payments through PayPal, CashApp and Venmo.  But property management can uniquely and substantially benefit from the adoption of push payments through the implementation of push to debit and beyond. Vendors in property management are coming to expect increased speed and choice in accessing their money, and push payments is a surefire way of making both happen with minimal headache.  The shift toward instant access to money via push payments will soon become standard and lead to new opportunities to embed payments even more fully into company workflows. Artificial intelligence (AI) might also be used to help automate the invoice-to-approval continuum. In other words, the future of push payments is bright.  With the adoption of the FedNow service and as other large corporations allow instant payments to take route within their own business practices, and as a new generation of renters and business owners come into their own, the desire for a variety of digital payments will become an expectation. So watch this space because the instant money push payments revolution is only beginning. Better Push Payments With Ingo Ready to institute push payments for your property management company? Ingo Money powers embedded payments at scale. Established in 2001, we provide instant payments, payouts, account funding, and digital issuing solutions for companies of all sizes, with risk management expertise and network reach to over 4.5 billion consumer accounts. Want to learn more? Contact us today!

For over 22 years, Ingo Money Inc. has made money accessible, instant, digital, and secure for businesses and their customers.  We are proud of our long history and the experiences our teams have brought to the marketplace through true partnerships that have stood the test of time. There are new entrants to this space all the time, but it’s impossible to get 22 years of experience in a day less than 22 years. We have successfully served our clients through multiple economic cycles with a turnover rate of near zero.   As the concept of Money Mobility has evolved in the marketplace, our product lines have expanded, creating the need for the introduction of a new brand—one more targeted at banks and corporations seeking to capitalize on the tremendous opportunities brought about by modern digital money movement.  Today, I am delighted to introduce Ingo Payments. Our new brand builds upon the strong foundation of our Ingo Money brand and aims to better differentiate our offerings to businesses seeking diverse payment services.  Why Ingo Payments? We take immense pride in our rich history of providing check risk management, enterprise, and mobile check cashing services to our clients. Over the years, under the Ingo Money brand, we have successfully delivered these solutions to a wide range of banks and fintechs, solidifying our standing within the industry. This part of our business continues to enjoy double-digit growth rates as more consumers migrate their transactions to mobile first.  With the introduction of the new Ingo Payments brand, our goal is to further strengthen our ability to address the needs of a rapidly evolving digital market. Operating these two unique brands in harmony will enable us to communicate and distinguish our specialized services more effectively.   Two Brand Identities The Ingo Payments brand will house our embedded payment solutions—including digital disbursements, instant account funding, payment acceptance and upcoming banking-as-a-service offerings. You can explore these offerings here, on our new Ingo Payments website.  The Ingo Money brand will continue to reflect our check solutions, including our check risk management APIs, mobile check cashing SDK and the Ingo Money App.  Our Pledge to You  Whether you are a prospective or current partner or client of Ingo Money, Ingo Payments, or both, our team remains committed to providing you with the most innovative payment solutions coupled with our unparalleled service and support. Here’s to a future filled with new payments possibilities! 

Instant payments have become the de facto expectation for consumers and businesses alike. Brands that cannot deliver on the promise of real-time, safe-to-spend funds will quickly find themselves losing ground to the competition.  Companies in the United States seeking this new standard have a growing number of payment options to choose from, including Same-Day ACH, push-to-card, the RTP® Network, and – now – FedNow. It can be confusing to know which is best suited to your needs and what advantages one holds over the others.  At Ingo Payments, we believe in the power of instant payments and recipient choice. We support a wide array of options, many of which enable real-time delivery of funds to accounts or cards.  To help make sense of which real-time payment options might be best suited for your business, we’re breaking down the key differences between the RTP Network, FedNow and push-to-card.  The RTP Network Launched in 2017, the RTP Network is the latest payment network from The Clearing House (one of the key owners/operators of the ACH system). It delivers payments of up to $1,000,000 that settle in just seconds to bank accounts at participating institutions, 24x7x365. Consumers or businesses use the ABA/Routing number typically found at the bottom of a check or in their online banking experience as the alias for receiving money.   Most of the big banks and the larger regional banks participate in the RTP network, but it is not yet ubiquitous.  FedNow Launched in July 2023, FedNow is the Federal Reserve’s new instant payment service. Like with the RTP Network, it promises ‘always-on’ instant settlement and uses the same ABA/Routing number for an alias. Transaction amounts are capped at $500,000 per transaction but it still has limited reach with only 274 (mainly small) banks connected so far. It holds promise to extend instant payments to more financial institutions – including smaller, community banks – but a survey by Cornerstone Advisors found that less than half of banks and credit unions plan to offer real time payments by the end of this year.  Push-to-Card Push-to-card payments use the existing card networks’ payment rails, just in reverse. Funds can be sent directly to a bank account via an eligible cardholder’s debit card or prepaid card in near real-time. Push-to-card already has coverage for 98% or more of the accounts and cards in market today. Equally important, most consumers – especially younger ones – are comfortable using their card number as a payment alias. These are reliable payments that can reach any account on that card company’s network, making its reach to cardholders nearly universal. Like the RTP Network, the system is available 24x7x365, but with transaction amounts of up to $125,000.  Choosing an Instant Payment Option The Ingo platform enables seamless orchestration of payments across all relevant instant rails, including both the RTP Network and push-to-card, to provide our clients with flexibility when choosing payment options. Ingo also supports additional payment options such as PayPal, Venmo, ACH, and paper checks. In practice, much of this comes down to familiarity on behalf of the recipient. Consumers often don’t know the difference between the RTP Network, FedNow or push-to-card – they only know that they want their money in their account as fast as possible. Their preference is likely determined by whether it’s easier to enter a card number or a bank account number. For companies, that means it’s important to provide coverage across multiple options to ensure you’re meeting customer demand and expectations. In the case of Ingo Payments, we solicit destination account information from recipients then process the transaction using the fastest available rail, according to their preference. If that’s a bank account, then it depends whether the receiving bank is on an instant payment network. If it’s a debit card number, then it settles instantly. This is why neither the RTP Network nor FedNow serve as good standalone options for digital disbursements compared to push-to-card or traditional ACH today. Together, they only cover about 65% of available accounts, meaning that even combined they don’t provide the ubiquity needed for full adoption. They are better viewed as “plumbing” that can serve as accelerants to ACH because a payment can be diverted to an instant rail versus the ACH batch rail if it’s using the same alias. The Future of Instant Payment Rails Ultimately, we see both the RTP Network and FedNow as potential ACH killers because they can deliver instant funds without the recipient ever having to know about them or make an explicit choice of payment rail. There is also the potential for FedNow to complete the coverage begun by the RTP Network through its appeal and reach to smaller banks. If that happens, then all bank account transfers using the ABA/Routing number alias could convert to instant payments. Over time, the RTP Network and FedNow may also prove advantageous for business customers versus push-to-card. Oftentimes, large businesses do not have a debit card option and must rely on ABA/Routing number aliases. In that case, these two rails are an obvious preference over push-to-card. Further, any use case that requires invoice data or other information to travel with the payment is better suited to the RTP Network and FedNow because push-to-card does not have that capability. No matter your preference or which rail is best suited to your use case, the challenge is in integrating to them. There is no interoperability between the RTP Network and FedNow or between push-to-card and ABA/Routing number aliases. The burden is on the company to do multiple integrations and to build some form of routing and support capabilities. This is further complicated by the reality that the technology, risk management, regulations and support requirements are different for each payment rail. And on top of that, each involve coordination with card networks, wallets, international wallets and more. The task can be daunting. This is the heart of the Ingo Payments value proposition. We make the process seamless for clients by offering payment orchestration across all the relevant rails through a single API, to ultimately deliver on customers’ expectations for a modern payments experience.