American Realty Investors safeguards its receivables with Zego’s Revenue Protection Suite
About American Realty Investors
American Realty Investors (ARI) is a fully digital property management company with 4,000 multifamily units throughout Texas. Their journey with Zego started in 2017 with the goal of eliminating in-office payments.
ARI renters quickly adopted electronic payment methods with Zego. Some even continued to pay with money orders at one of the hundreds of CheckFreePay locations between Houston and Dallas.
- Zego Customer: Since 2017
- Portfolio: Multifamily
- Zego Products: Zego Pay, Revenue Protection Suite, Zego Utility, and Resident Billing
- Accounting Software: ResMan
Key highlights
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Protecting revenue streams
Zego’s Revenue Protection Suite offers ARI added defenses and safeguards against losses due to NSF returns and chargebacks.
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Eliminating manual processes
With Zego, ARI has eliminated the need to handle paper checks in-office during rent week, helping its teams save time.
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Easing bank account authentication
Utilizing Zego’s Plaid integration, residents’ bank account information is easily authenticated, eliminating data entry errors that lead to returns.
The challenge
As a long-time partner, ARI has worked with the Zego team to help ease some of its more manual processes associated with rent payment processing. Prior to working with Zego, Lester Hernandez, IT Asset Management at ARI, noted that everything was very manual citing that the introduction of Zego provided lots of time savings, specifically with deposits for him and his teams.
From eliminating checks in-office and providing a number of payment options such as Zego CashPay for its residents, ARI’s digital payment utilization successfully stands today at more than 80% across its portfolio.
More recently, though, Zego and ARI identified an opportunity to better protect its portfolio against fraud and low renter funds during the all-important rent week. Hernandez noted that a number of ARI’s properties were experiencing the common issue of renters with insufficient funds on rent day, resulting in hours of phone calls for staff to resolve these payments.
As the calls began to add up, the pressure on its expected cash flow burdened the properties.
The solution
To help protect itself against these challenges, Hernandez and ARI partnered with Zego to implement its Revenue Protection Suite. By rolling out this solution, ARI could ensure renters with insufficient funds for rent were notified ahead of their due date, helping properties prevent losses due to Non-Sufficient Funds (NSF) returns in the process.
In coordination with Zego’s customer success and implementation team, new renters at ARI were first asked to register with Zego Pay and authenticate their bank account with Plaid ahead of their first rent cycle - resulting in little to no hiccups. “Plaid has been around for a while, and renters are pretty familiar with it,” Hernandez recalled.
After seeing success with the initial rollout with new renters, existing residents were asked to enroll in the same process, garnering the same positive feedback.
Results
Since the rollout of the Revenue Protection Suite, ARI has experienced near-instant positive results across its portfolio. Using Plaid to verify funds has led to a 98% decrease in NSFs in less than a year since implementation.
ARI properties no longer deal with the stress of returned payments. They can even remove bank accounts if they believe they are fraudulent or unable to pay.
“Thanks to the Plaid integration Zego provides, we hardly see any NSFs anymore.”
In addition to its positive experience with the Revenue Protection Suite solution, ARI continues to see success in driving digital payment utilization, with more than 80% of units utilizing Zego Pay for their rent payments. “We really just don’t see checks anymore,” remarked Hernandez.
Chat with a Zego Expert
Interested in how Zego’s Revenue Protection Suite could help your team save time & money? Book time with a member of our Zego team today to learn how Zego Pay’s collection of tools provides clients with powerful safeguards against payment chargebacks, NSF returns, fraud, and more.