Tech launch: new app helps tenants offset their rental payments when they shop online

The My Rent Award app gives online shopping tenants cash-back payments each month which are then paid to their landlord direct.

A smartphone app has launched that rewards tenants for spending money with leading online retailers and service providers and then gives them money toward paying their rent.

My Rent Awards, which is available to download on both the Apple and Android app platforms, sends tenants vouchers and discount codes to spend at 200 websites.

When users buy goods and services, they are given cash-back credits that are added to a ring-fenced account that is allocated to their rent payments.

Participating companies on the platform include easyJet, Tesco, M&S, Superdrug, Iceland and EE.

It also has agreements with seven major UK Housing Associations; three of which are members of the G15 group – which is campaigning to make renting cheaper in the affordable homes sector.

The free app, developed by Priscilla Mazava and Nichola Fahey, is being offered both to 250,000 housing association tenants but also those in the private rented market.

LandlordZONE contacted the company to ask how the system would work. Its spokesperson replied that: “The money is paid directly to the Landlord. When a user signs up they have to provide their landlord details.”

Many proptech companies have attempted to provide ‘added benefit’ services by placing themselves between tenant and landlord in the payment system, but to date only a few have succeeded.

My Rent Awards, although it is coy about exactly how the system works, says it offers tenants ‘an easy-to-use and manageable process of paying their rent with discounted everyday spending, alongside providing landlords with guaranteed ringfenced payments’.

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