neil cobbold

‘An end to lettings fraud’, says fast-expanding rental payments platform

Rental payments platform PayProp says its technology will help eliminate fraud in the sector once and for all, as the company passes the 200-agent milestone in the UK. PayProp’s platform enables agents, tenants and landlords to see when rental payments are due and when they have been paid and moreover track each payment through the system until it arrives in the landlord’s account via the agent’s client account. “Our system enables it to be immediately obvious and transparent who has done what and when, during a payment,” says Chief Operating Officer Neil Cobbold (pictured, below). “It’s a fully ‘track and trace’ process that enables agents and landlords to reconcile payment right down to zero – so everyone knows exactly how every rental payment or deposit has been applied.” PayProp handles rental payments from 15,000 properties in the UK at the moment, and since launching two years ago PayProp has handled payments worth £200 million. “We want to raise the transparency levels regarding the whole rental payment transaction; the way agents and banks have interacted until now has been a bit smoke and mirrors, and that’s allowed problems to develop,” he says. Larger portfolios PayProp, which originally launched in 2004 in…