The rent-now, pay-later space has gotten a lot more crowded.
In January, the buy now, pay later company Affirm Holdings announced it would start offering its installment loans to renters. Two months later, Realpage announced the hiring of Zahir Khoja as its first chief fintech officer, following the July 2025 acquisition of flexible payment provider Livble.
Once confined primarily to startups, these products are increasingly being offered by larger players as they become part of the multifamily payment ecosystem.
“These [rent now, pay later programs] have been around, but they’ve been a rarity, really an exception, offered by startups that didn’t necessarily go anywhere,” Adam Rust, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America, told Multifamily Dive. “But now it’s clearly becoming something that more people are using, and more fintech creditors are willing to offer.”
These products, pitched as payment solutions for renters and embraced by some apartment operators, come with warnings from consumer advocates and face political pushback. At the same time, multifamily professionals say they can help qualify residents and control delinquencies.
Why rent now, pay later products are gaining steam
While there are a number of different models, Rust says these fintech lenders are essentially “lending half a month's rent to pick up the late fee.” However, structures, fees and repayment schedules vary by company. .
“They all have different pricing models,” Rust said. “Some of them are fixed fees. Some are scaled by size. Some are a membership fee plus a payment fee. Some are just a specific percentage of how much rent they extend.”
The flexible rent space also includes companies such as Flex, Qira, Split Pay, Esusu, among others.
In 2024, 49.4% of renter households were considered cost-burdened, according to a Congressional report. The median renter household spent 31% of its income on housing costs in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Since then rents have fallen in some places, but people are still squeezed.
“In many cities, the cost of rent has gone up and has outpaced wage growth,” Rust said. “That's simple. That's a fact. Everyone understands that.”
To cover cash shortfalls, renters may try to pawn items, use revolving credit cards, get payday loans or delay groceries, medical care and child care, according to Flex Vice President of Public Affairs Ryan Metcalf.
“The other solutions that are available to them to try to bridge that gap are typically short-term credit solutions, primarily credit cards or payday loans or other mechanisms,” Metcalf said. “Those products are problematic for most renters because most renters end up revolving on those balances. So not only do they accumulate interest, but they get into a debt spiral issue.”
In addition, paycheck schedules have become increasingly out of line with when the rent is due.
“It's a financial stretch for some households to make a big rent payment at the beginning of every month,” LeaseLock Chief Economist Greg Willett told Multifamily Dive in emailed comments. “Adding some flexibility to the payment process is worth exploring, and some housing providers already have programs in place that allow renters to pay in multiple installments, rather than all at once.”
“These are expensive loans by any measure. They might appear to be relatively low cost, but to use it repeatedly could mean an added expense of hundreds of dollars a year. That’s one more brick in the wall against affordability.”
Adam Rust
Director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America
A resident may have enough monthly income to pay the rent but not enough cash on the 1st. Rent now, pay later products promise to bridge that timing gap, possibly helping people avoid using credit cards to avoid late fees.
“The structural issue of how people earn income has changed significantly,” Metcalf said. “You have more people being paid biweekly, twice a month or variable. Rent has become a larger percentage of income, and because rent is due in full on the first, that creates a structural burden.”
Consumer advocate warnings
As the BNPL industry expands, it’s attracting growing scrutiny. In December 2025, the attorneys general of seven states, led by Connecticut and North Carolina, requested information from a half dozen BNPL providers, including Affirm Holdings, PayPal Holdings, Block-owned Afterpay, Sezzle, Zip and Klarna Group, about their loans and other business practices, according to Payments Dive.
The states want to know — among other things — what kind of loans the BNPL players offer, how those loans are repaid, how users can contact customer service for help, the procedures for customer disputes, how a company decides whether a consumer can repay a loan and how information is reported to credit reporting agencies, the letters said.
The move by the state AGs came just two weeks after a handful of Senate Democrats sent similar letters to several BNPL companies, seeking information about who uses the BNPL firms’ services and how often, and which consumers pay late, Payments Dive reported.
In February, California Assemblymember Tina McKinnor introduced AB 2350, which prohibits RNPL for rental housing by banning a licensee “from providing a loan agreement to rent residential real property, including, but not limited to, under a split loan agreement.” The bill passed the California State Assembly and is now in the Senate.
Earlier this year, Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida, who once used BNPL programs, sent a letter asking Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Acting Director Russell Vought “to investigate rent now, pay later companies and hold them accountable for potential violations of federal consumer financial protection laws,” according to The Associated Press.
Outside organizations have also voiced opposition to RNPL. A February 2026 report from Protect Borrowers and Towards Justice raised alarms about BNPL programs in rental housing, claiming providers push products that involve high costs and attempt to hide these fees by mislabeling charges and misleading consumers. In some cases, the group said that interest rates on these loans can exceed 180%, which can ultimately lead to eviction for renters.
To protect renters, Protect Borrowers and Towards Justice has asked policymakers and law enforcement officials to investigate and prosecute RNPL firms for violating federal and state consumer protections.
“These are expensive loans by any measure,” Rust said. “They might appear to be relatively low cost, but to use it repeatedly could mean an added expense of hundreds of dollars a year. That’s one more brick in the wall against affordability.”
The owner-operator impact
While debate continues about the usefulness of RNPL programs for consumers, some apartment owners have found them valuable.
Ian Bingham, a veteran property management executive and a consultant with SLW Advisors, told Multifamily Dive that management firms have become more sophisticated in qualifying residents as they take on part-time jobs, especially in class B and lower apartments.
RNPL programs can provide another layer of screening because they are “qualifying pretty much the same way” apartment managers do, Bingham said.
“If someone doesn't have enough income or enough regularity of income, they're not going to let them do the pay-as-you-go because they're the ones now taking on that risk,” Bingham said. “From that end, it is an extra layer of credentialing to qualify someone.”
In certain communities, such as senior communities, RNPL programs “helped delinquency a lot,” Bingham said.
“Rent is due on the 1st,” Bingham said. “If their check doesn't come till the 5th, and if they're not in a position where they're always a month ahead, which a lot of this country isn't, they were either always incurring a late fee or had to work something out.”
However, Bingham said RNPL programs can also obscure underlying problems in a portfolio, even as they provide another way to evaluate a prospective resident.
“What does frighten me is if those [short-term payment programs] are needed because of the irregularity of income,” he said. “A full-time gig worker scares me as an owner-operator because we all know that the regularity of that income is spotty. The ideal renter is someone who's got a primary source of income that we can count on so that they can pay their rent.”
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