The risk, on the landlord's part, of accepting a partial amount of rent is that you're altering the terms of the lease on the fly. If it persists you wave your ability to enforce the original agreement as you now have a history of acceptance of an alternative agreement.
There's also the discrimination aspect of it. If a landlord accepts partials from one tenant but not another, there's potential they'll have to explain themselves in court.
The biggest risk is legal -- if you cash two of three checks for example, have you accepted partial rent? Can you evict for non-payment or did you just accept payment? Will the two people who paid fight the eviction? Can you evict just one tenant?
So many thorny issues you just don't want to deal with. So much simpler to say, "give me one check, it's either on time or not".
That seems very high risk. Back when I lived in shared houses I'd prefer to pay and then be reimbursed by whoever missed their share than have the rent paid late. Could users set up a discretionary fund that's used to cover missed payments from their friends?
Or you can get into the credit business and just pay the bill and charge that person a fee or interest. :)
This. I'm not in the category of sharing bills with roommates anymore, but do remember it well and it was a pain.
I'd rather deal with a tech company that can provide better customer service and float for me than a utility bill that loses my info or doesn't do auto-pay correctly.
So if your value proposition is:
- never miss a bill again (Ysplit pays up front for it)[0]
- never deal with customer service for a utility again
Then I think people would pay for that convenience.
[0] - you could do the reverse and have people pay up front and give a discount, then use that float for finances. See -> Venmo.
I ask because the City of Berkeley for example tells their landlords to never accept multiple rent checks because it makes things complicated if only part of the rent is paid.