Challenge

Landing was founded in early 2019 to revolutionise how people find, rent, and live in flats on a long-term basis. For a small annual fee, Landing gives members access to an end-to-end platform allowing them to reserve flats online for long-term renting. Since launching, it has expanded to over 200 cities across the U.S., creating a national network of more than 35,000 fully furnished flats.

Supporting such explosive growth required a trusted, flexible, and scalable payments solution that could handle subscription and rental payments from members, and the varying ancillary transactions related to parking, pets, utilities, and other expenses. The platform also had to support the onboarding of, and payments to, Landing’s on-the-ground hosts who provide in-person member services. And, with rents skyrocketing nationwide, the company needed protection against fraud, especially considering the size of each member’s monthly transaction.

Landing saw massive growth opportunities ahead, but needed to ensure a weak payments infrastructure didn’t slow it down.

Solution

After extensive research into payments solutions, Landing chose Stripe. “Stripe had the best suite of tools that would enable us to scale and grow,” said Jason Tsai, a member of the finance & strategy team at Landing.

The combination of Landing’s needs, from the widely varying options available to members to the differing employment structures of hosts, was a perfect fit for the fully integrated Stripe payments platform. Beyond just flexibility in payments, Landing required strong fraud protection and dependable authorisation rates given the value of the company’s premium rentals.

To help combat fraud related to free member trials, the company chose Stripe Radar, and to get landlords paid quickly, it chose Adaptive Acceptance to increase confidence when accepting large credit card transactions. Adding these two products was “a no-brainer,” said Tsai. Landing also chose Connect to streamline the disparate processes of onboarding and paying hosts who could be either contractors or employees.

Stripe’s combination of flexibility, scalability, and proven success with similar growth-stage companies, and ability to scale shown by its enterprise customers, gave Landing confidence in its ability to continue reshaping the landscape of apartment living.

Results

With Stripe’s payments platform to accept rental payments, send host and landlord payouts, and manage their transactional business, Landing had the payments infrastructure necessary to support rapid expansion. Since partnering with Stripe, Landing has seen a 10x increase in top line growth while reducing risk and streamlining operations.

Supporting continued expansion with Stripe’s payments infrastructure

Stripe’s proven, dependable, and fully integrated suite of payments products gives Landing the power to keep growing the business beyond the startup stage knowing payments won’t become the bottleneck. The streamlined solution lets Landing easily accept payments and send payouts, and helps the company give members, hosts, and landlords a more seamless experience.

Reducing risk with Radar and Adaptive Acceptance

Stripe’s machine learning infrastructure combats fraud so Landing can continue adding members, hosts, and landlords without the risk of either losing money to fraudsters or unintentionally blocking legitimate customers. Adaptive Acceptance further optimises authorisation rates to reduce failed payments and avoid hurting cash flow or the customer experience.

Increasing operational capacity for continued growth and scale

Stripe’s seamless integration and flexible, easy-to-use products ensure Landing can build an intuitive onboarding and payments process for the on-the-ground hosts who are so critical to the Landing experience and the company’s ability to scale.