RedGirraffe Review: Best way to pay rent by credit card in India

Rent payments by credit card in India are still at a nascent stage. While the concept has existed for quite some time, it did not really take off until last year partly due to COVID-19 and also the increasing benefits on rent payment by credit card. RedGirraffe was one of the first to offer this service in India. Here is a detailed RedGirraffe review from my experience.

Redgirraffe Requirements

Compared to other rent payment services, RedGirraffe RentPay has a more organized onboarding process before you can do payments. There are a couple of details that one needs to have apart from the regular details like rent and owner bank account details.

• Rental Agreement – Mandatory for rent of 20000 and above
• PAN number of Owner – Mandatory for any rent amount

The second point is necessary in the case of RedGirraffe while many others like NoBroker do not ask for the same. So, if you do not have your owner’s PAN then you cannot use RedGirraffe.

Registration Process

The registration process is simple once you have all the information. There are two sections to fill up Tenant and Landlord information. As mentioned above, you will need both your and the owner’s PAN plus rental agreement for rent of 20000 and above.

While registering, the credit card by which you plan to do rent payments will need to be chosen. If you need to change this later on, then you would need to contact RedGirraffe prior to bill generation so that they can update their end.

After registration, RedGirraffe validates the details and rent agreement(if required) and creates a RG biller id for rent payments.

This RG biller id can then be registered at one of the credit card issuer portals for automatic rent payment. Currently, RedGirraffe supports IndusInd, ICICI, HDFC, Kotak Mahindra, Yes, RBL, HSBC and Citibank credit cards.

Payment Process

The payment process varies depending on which credit card you use to pay. However, in general, your credit card should support RedGirraffe as one of the billers. I use Payzapp to pay off the RedGirraffe bill on the 1st of every month and the payment hits my landlord’s account on either the 3rd or 4th of the month.

You can also set it to auto-pay using the bill payment system of your credit card.

Final Thoughts

This is my hands-on Redgirraffe review after having using it for more than a year. While I have used alternate rent payment services like NoBroker/Cred RedGirraffe is still the lowest-cost provider. With 0.39%+GST charges, one can get the best benefits while using a credit card for paying rent.

The only drawback I see is the time taken by RedGirraffe for crediting rent payments to the landlord’s account. NoBroker/Cred mostly credit it the same day but that comes at a cost of 1% or above. RedGirraffe also runs offers through its payment partners which provide extra cashback. For example, Citibank has an offer running where you can get 3000 cashback for paying rent through RedGirraffe for 3 consecutive months.