Pinch

Improve your credit score with your rent payments

3 followers

Improve your credit score with your rent payments

3 followers

Credit bureaus use your apartment rental payments today to calculate your credit score, but only if your rental payments are on your credit report. Pinch is the only mobile app that lets you, a tenant, report your rent payments to all 3 major credit bureaus and improve your credit score. Best of all, Pinch is completely free to use.

Launch tags:Android•iOS•Productivity

Launch Team

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Chime

Maker

Hi everyone 👋 I’m Michael Ducker, co-founder of Pinch Rent. I built Pinch with Maia because we saw a changing lifestyle amongst our friends and more broadly, the American public: out of necessity and desire, they were renting their housing, transit, and stuff more often then they were using credit (or seeking loans) to purchase these items. We heard that when eventually they went make a big purchase with credit, they were stunned to find out that without a history of borrowing money, they didn’t have great credit scores. Credit bureaus and credit scoring companies are realizing that those who can pay rent on time month after month are likely to also handle credit responsibly. They’ve integrated rent payments from large landlords into their scoring algorithms - and found that with rental payments, 100% of tenants who were previously un-scorable gained a credit score. And almost 3/4 of those who participate experience a credit score increase. We realized every renter should be able to have their rent reported to the major bureaus and get this credit boost, not just people renting from large corporate landlords, so we built Pinch to offer this service for all tenants, for free. (We’ll make our money helping landlords assess the risk of new tenants and offer reporting as a perk for their existing tenants!). Try us out today — we’re on both iOS and Android — and please let me know your feedback!

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8yr ago

@miradu This is fantastic! As someone who's trying to get out of debt, this is so refreshing. Why should those who manage their money well and are not in debt be "punished" when making purchases? It just means you're good at borrowing money. Would love to see a shift to favor those that pay their normal bills on time :) Kudos!

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8yr ago

@miradu so basically you copied creditladder

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8yr ago

@miradu This is a really cool idea! Would you be open to working with a nonprofit who helps low-to-moderate income Americans kickstart a savings habit? LMK if you'd be interested in chatting more about working together!

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8yr ago

Chime

Maker

@earn YES! We love @earn! Send us note please: founders@pinchrent.com

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8yr ago

Pipedream

@miradu @maiab what does Pinch do w/ my data? I read through the Privacy Policy (https://www.pinchrent.com/#/priv...) and it's not totally clear to me. Do you share my data with any 3rd parties?

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8yr ago

Chime

Maker

@maiab @droosevelt Yes, we do share data - the explicit purpose of our product is to allow consumers to choose to publicize to credit bureaus (and thus their thousands of customers - lenders, insurance companies etc) that they're a good risk! Since we aren't a national credit bureau ourselves, we use third party sources to verify your information and we share the verified information to major credit bureaus.

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8yr ago

Pipedream

Thanks for the quick response, @miradu, makes sense. And do you monetize the data? If so, how?

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8yr ago

Chime

Maker

@droosevelt We offer paid services to landlords and property managers, including bulk reporting for all of their tenants, and risk assessments for incoming tenants: https://www.pinchrent.com/#/manager

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8yr ago

Pipedream

Thanks for the info @miradu!

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8yr ago

Product Hunt

This is super smart, @miradu and @maiab. I'm curious which type of consumers signup for Pinch. I assume it's people who don't have great credit as they would have the highest motivation to improve it. 🤔

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8yr ago

Google Play Music

@miradu @maiab @rrhoover Also people with no credit history, like recent immigrants and younger folks who can’t get or don’t want loans (which you need to build credit)

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8yr ago

Chime

Maker

@maiab @rrhoover @iamjakestream it's really been everyone - services like credit karma and credit sesame have become mainstream so awareness of credit scores are at all time highs, but these services do little to help you move the number outside of offering you another credit card. Pinch will make a disproportionate impact on your score if you have little to no credit history (recent immigrants, youth, recent divorcees), but even if your score is ok, it will still make an impact by providing information that's different from a credit card - plus it feels good to finally get something for paying your rent :)

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8yr ago

I really like the idea and the app. However I stopped during onboarding because I couldn’t determine how you use my data. The product is free so I naturally assume I’m the product. When I click “Privacy Policy” I’m taken to your FAQ. I didn’t see any terms or privacy info there. That gave me pause. 😐 Can you help me find your actual privacy policy and explain your business model?

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8yr ago

Chime

Maker

@tsudo Our privacy policy is here https://www.pinchrent.com/#/priv... and the explicit purpose of our product is to validate and report your data (identity, rental information) to third party credit bureaus, who use it to help you qualify for financial products. Most of our customers want to participate in the financial ecosystem and find that given a lack of lending history, they don't have enough data to qualify for affordable rates on loans and insurance. We offer our product for free to consumers because we have the privilege to be able to - we saw very quickly how much of an impact rent reporting was making on our low income and thin file customers, who historically have been gouged by companies charging hundreds of dollars for this service, and wanted to expand access to rent reporting as fast as we possibly could. Our business model is to charge landlords to assess the risk of new tenants and offer reporting as a perk for their existing tenants.

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8yr ago

How are you able to offer this for free when there's paid competitors out there? What does Pinch get in return?

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8yr ago

Chime

Maker

@okayrene The vast majority of the cost of offering this service in in verification of the data - is it a real person, is it a real payment, is it a real lease etc. Underneath pinch we've built software to automate verifying all of these questions, without relying as heavily on humans as before. This allows us to offer the consumer product for free, which then helps accelerate our awareness with landlords who we charge to offer risk services and rent reporting for all of their tenants ( https://www.pinchrent.com/#/manager )

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8yr ago

Ramp

Congrats on the launch!! How much time did it take to build up those relationships + integration into the credit bureaus? Amazing job on getting all of them onboard.

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8yr ago

Chime

Maker

@charleyma The bureaus have been great partners in supporting our development - they traditionally have a lot of success working with large companies, but rentals are run by millions of individual landlords, and so with our focus on the tenant we're bringing new data to their systems that help more americans get accurate credit scores.

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8yr ago

I would like more information - How much does it cost the tenant? how much does it cost the landlord? Does it require any cooperation by the landlord, or can an individual tenant use this?

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8yr ago

Chime

Maker

@joan Pinch is free for tenants, and we charge landlords to report all of their tenants a low monthly rate. Most tenants can use us without having to contact the landlord but it depends on how much documentation they have from their landlord already (eg, we need a signed lease)

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8yr ago

@miradu I would like to talk to you more about this - if you would be so kind, email me at joan@lifeability.net

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8yr ago

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