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428. Hosting Hotline

Introduction and Welcome

Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:00] [00:01:00] Hello. Welcome back to another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

Annette Grant: I’m Annette grant. And together we are Thanks for Visiting.

Sarah Karakaian: And this is the Hosting Hotline. If you want to get your hosting question answered here on the hotline, all you have to do is go to hostinghotline. com. Ask your question. Why just, I was so Midwestern there. Ask your question. Ask your question. Ask your question. And we’ll answer it here on the podcast like we’re going to do with Karen.

Listener Question from Karen

Hosting Hotline Caller: Hi, my name is Karen Olson. I live in Canada, but we own a vacation property in Maui. And right now, if it’s not booked through Airbnb or VRBO, we have our own website, and we ask guests to pay by cheque. This is getting complicated, as some guests like to pay by credit card or, money transfer from bank to bank, but because we’re Canadian, we cannot set up a Zelle or a Venmo account. I was wondering if [00:02:00] you had any suggestions and any other, money transfer options.

Research and Initial Advice

Sarah Karakaian: We loved this question from Karen, so much so that we paused releasing the episode because we needed to do some research.

Annette Grant: I want to just applaud Karen Host. This is She is like, there’s a challenge. Something’s changing. She is attacking the, the new thing that’s come up in her hosting business and figuring it out.

So I just love that. She’s like, All right, you know what? Things are changing. People don’t want to do checks. And I agree, Karen, checks are going to become obsolete. So you do need to get ahead of this. It is actually safer, not only for the client, but safer for you to not take the check. So I just want to applaud you of like, Hey, perfect.

Things are changing. I’m going to figure it out and I’m going to ask people for help. So well done. And that’s what we had. We asked some people for help to make sure that we were answering your question.

Exploring Payment Solutions

Annette Grant: So we’re going to start first with our immediate, answer was to get a [00:03:00] Stripe account. And then we were like, well, wait a second.

We are not Canadian and we wanted to do some research on Could you open a Stripe account which could do credit card processing and I’m gonna let Sarah continue here

Sarah Karakaian: Yeah, so I reached out to Stripe help which by the way, everyone is if you can find it on the Stripe platform, they’re very helpful

Annette Grant: and you can call.

Sarah Karakaian: You can call. I’ve

Annette Grant: literally called people, not just to chat and they answer quick.

Sarah Karakaian: Well, actually we’ll put it in the show notes, the phone number that you can call because it is hard to find, but once you do, they are incredibly helpful. And this gentleman who I was speaking to via chat, actually I didn’t call, but we was chatting with him and he said, if the property is based in the United States, then The business is technically based in the United States, which means that Karen could get a United States based business so she could get a United States based, bank account and Stripe can absolutely be a part of that, that money flow, right?

Annette Grant: And again asterisk asterisk. We’re not accountants We’re not [00:04:00] attorneys or bankers. Yeah, we don’t know exactly, you know, how you have your business Set up if you actually do have it set up as a business because segue into our other partner The second thing that we immediately thought of was Relay and we actually had, we reached out to Relay to have them answer also, um, to see if they would be a good solution for you also.

Relay Banking Solution

Sarah Karakaian: So Karen and everyone listening, I don’t know if you know our deep love for Relay everyone, but we discovered it several years ago. We’ve been using it for several years, not just for our short term rental business, but for our, fix and flip businesses, for anything that we need to do banking with. We have been working with Relay now for years.

We moved all of our business banking. It took a year to move all of our business banking to Relay. But we did it. So I just want to let everyone know that they are a partner of ours, but that is because we believe in the product and we use it. I mean, Annette wakes up every morning and that’s the first thing she opens is that website.

Annette Grant: I a cup of coffee first. Right, [00:05:00] right. But you’re first. On my app. And it’s

Sarah Karakaian: on my app. And so, Karen, the reason why we love Relay is because you can. First of all, you can have the money that comes through Stripe, take the money and put it into your Relay account. And this way your guests can decide if they want to do credit card, they can decide if they want to do, like you said, bank to bank.

Annette, can you share, I’m putting you on the spot a little bit, but Annette is not a fan of Zelle or Venmo for business and do you want to share why?

Annette Grant: Oh, Venmo, I just you know, there isn’t really like the receipt capture that I like the accountants really can’t log in and have their own log in and then they’re always asking. I’m just not a fan

Sarah Karakaian: when it pops up actually in relay because there’s a few times where I am literally back is against the wall and I have to use Venmo. And it pops up as Venmo. It doesn’t pop up as the reason why.

Annette Grant: Right. And then it’s just like having to remember and then again, accountants don’t have access.

Um, and I like to have. That’s true. Some sort of recourse to, you know, like if we pay [00:06:00] somebody, like there’s no way to. Right. To do anything there. Like, I’m, with Relay, I can request W9s before I pay them, Venmo doesn’t have it that way. So, Venmo, I don’t care for. And then Zelle, the other reason I don’t care for Zelle is someone has to also have a Zelle account.

Or they used to and it was like clunky again. The biggest reason I don’t like either of those is that through Relay, I can request W9s as I am. Requesting to send payment to someone. So that’s just like a double check for me. So at the end of the day, it makes my life easier. And so that’s why I like to use our preferred platform, which I use, payments through relay.

Sarah Karakaian: And Karen, obviously you don’t need to send W nines out to your guests before they send you payments. But that’s just like, if you have a vendor or a thing of that nature, it’s all encompassing with running the business, having to do that. Karen, what we didn’t know was. Although, a giant portion of the Relay team is based in Canada, we didn’t know [00:07:00] if they could have Canadian businesses on the platform.

But again, your property is in Maui, so we’re like, well, I wonder if it’s a U. S. business. So obviously, we don’t know all the answers, but we did ask Right, because

Annette Grant: don’t you have to file taxes in the U. S. if you have a

Sarah Karakaian: property

Annette Grant: that’s

Sarah Karakaian: Okay, we’re thinking again. I think so. But Karen, we decided to get our friends at Relay to record a message to you.

If you decide to check out relay to help you bridge this gap of being able to accept bank to bank or credit card payments. And here’s what relay had to say.

Relay’s Response

Deanna Zubrickas, Relay: Hi there, this is Deanna calling in from Relay. I’m here to answer a question here. Now, I understand that the host lives in Canada and owns a rental property in Hawaii.

So, as long as this property is a registered U. S. business, so I’m looking for an EIN, I’m looking You know, it might be an LLC. Then you can definitely open a relay business account, providing you have a physical business address to tie the account to. I’m presuming this would be the [00:08:00] address in Hawaii. You can use this account to receive payments through third party platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo, PayPal, Venmo.

We work for, work with most payment platforms other than Zelle, but you can also receive payments directly to the account via wire, ACH, and check. And as I’m a Canadian, answering my fellow Canadian, ACH would be the closest option to e transfer. So, fastest form, free to send, but you need banking details to do so.

So, good luck!

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Sarah Karakaian: So, Karen, if you’re not, if you don’t have, if you haven’t set up an entity to represent your Maui short term rental, that could be something you consider doing to be able to accept payments more easily as well. And

Annette Grant: then last offer here is if you aren’t, you know, if that you’re, you don’t have an EIN, if you aren’t set up as a business in the US, I would just go to, you know, wherever your Airbnb payments and where you’re depositing those checks, whatever bank that is.[00:09:00]

And. Set up a meeting with them and bring this question to them and ask them how they would handle it. But that is what we have for you today. Great question. We would love to come visit you in Maui, so let us know when you have some empty or open dates.

Sarah Karakaian: And if you are interested in finding out more about Relay, I’m telling you everyone, it is such a great platform.

It’s online that they partner with ThreadBank, which is located in Tennessee and they are FDIC insured. You can find all those details obviously on the Relay website, but we’ve been using them for years and we really enjoy

Annette Grant: it. And we’ll put that link also in the show notes.

Sarah Karakaian: Well,

Annette Grant: with that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

I’m Annette Grant, and together we are, thanks for visiting. Talk to you next

time. [00:10:00]