US real estate players will have picked up on the rise of PayProp, an aggressively expanding market entrant buoyed by the international successes of its automated, bank-integrated rental payment processing platform for property managers.
What's less known about this disruptive player is that its technology is based in part on GivenGain, the nonprofit fundraising platform founded by the same pair of entrepreneurs who started PayProp. The two organisations were started by South African brothers Johannes and Jaco van Eeden–GivenGain in 2001 and PayProp in 2004.
PayProp
Today, PayProp is trusted by thousands of property professionals worldwide to automate their rental collections, accounting and outgoing payments on behalf of owner investors. The platform currently processes almost $1.7bn a year in client funds.
What's the reason for its success?
"PayProp's service is hardwired into the banking system for increased transaction speed and complete accuracy of account values at all times," says Louw Liebenberg, CEO of PayProp in North America.
Calling it a "trust account on steroids", Liebenberg explains it combines automated rent collection (via its Tenant portal, bank transfers, checks and ACH debits); automated accounting (smart deposit recognition and beneficiary allocation); and automated banking (approval and distribution of all pre-reconciled payments in a couple of clicks).
Based on this value proposition, the company built up a leading share of the South African market early on, and from there branched out to the UK in 2015, Canada in 2018 and the United States in September 2019.
The road ahead looks good. In the US, PayProp currently operates in Florida and Texas, and is scheduled to start trading soon in Alabama, Missouri and Illinois. Since landing in the US, it has pulled off some stunning partnerships, platform innovations and business achievements.
In 2020, after first partnering with regional bank Bank United, PayProp signed Bank of America as its nationwide banking partner in 2020, offering advances such as next-day payments to same-bank beneficiaries throughout the US.
Since then, PayProp has been named a global Approved Supplier to franchisees of RE/MAX, an American real estate giant with more than 100,000 agents operating in more than 6,800 offices in 100 countries.
The company has also launched multiple technological innovations in the short time since it landed in the US, such as check payments to owners, regardless of how the rent was paid; automated 1099 reports for owners; hugely successful mobile text notifications to tenants in arrears; and a global launch of its application programming interface to allow integration with other software products.
GivenGain
In turn, the GivenGain Foundation has had phenomenal success of its own in the United States over the last year, based on a solid value proposition that has traveled just as well as PayProp's – namely to provide a platform for charities to automate the solicitation, processing and management of donation income via direct donations and peer-to-peer fundraisers.
Today, it has donors in 194 countries supporting charities in more than 80 countries, and events in 27 countries. After signing on as the official fundraising platform for the Detroit Marathon in 2020, it now also powers the fundraising element of the Boston Marathon, which is expected to raise more than $30m again this year. Aside from the 20,000 qualified runners, a global field of 70,000 virtual runners will participate and fundraise for the Boston event.
GivenGain also provides online crowdfunding services to many big US charities, including the American Red Cross, United Way, St Jude Children's Research Hospital, the New England Patriots Foundation, the Red Sox Foundation, the Boston Bruins Foundation, the Gronk Nation Youth Foundation and the Boston Celtics Foundation.
Payment revolution x2
Liebenberg says the bond remains strong between PayProp and GivenGain.
PayProp provides GivenGain with infrastructural, financial and resource sharing support, while GivenGain acts as the nonprofit foundation of PayProp and the Humanstate Group it forms part of. GivenGain offers volunteer opportunities to all PayProp and Humanstate staff to volunteer one day a month and to fundraise–both to give back to the group's communities and to help bring the geographically distributed group together through virtual events.
PayProp and GivenGain also share the same vision of overcoming barriers through automation.
"Like a charity, payments are among a property manager's biggest frustrations and opportunities. And by and large, the solution is the same for both," says Liebenberg.
"While PayProp speeds up the collection, accounting and banking of residential rental income, GivenGain automates charity donations and amplifies their reach by enabling their supporters to fundraise for them."
"If you can automate the core task of collecting and processing rental or donation income, you can scale your operations and market exposure, plus save lots of time to spend on your core marketing, sales and customer service activities. PayProp's US clients grew by an average of 36% in 2020."
Value proposition
Armed with this clear value proposition and a platform that shares much of the same underlying code, PayProp and GivenGain have been making their customers' jobs easier through payment automation for the better part of the last two decades.
"Sometimes a technology is so powerful that it has cross-over appeal in a completely different industry and geographic region." Louw Liebenberg, CEO, PayProp in North America
By investing in PayProp's cutting-edge payment automation for their business, real estate business owners and property managers can help support a foundation that helps process millions for charities around the world. To learn more PayProp and GivenGain, visit www.payprop.com and www.givengain.com. To see PayProp in action, request a free, no-obligation demo at www.payprop.com/join.
