Last week, Tower Grove Neighborhoods Community Development Corporation (TGNCDC) facilitated a meeting between the Cornerstone Corporation and MoCaFi. Cornerstone is a faith based community development corporation with a mission of providing supportive affordable rental housing in the West End neighborhood. MoCaFi is a national mobile financial platform that offers banking services to traditionally underbanked populations. TGNCDC has been working with MoCaFi through our tenant screening program, HomeScreen, to provide rent collection and reporting to HomeScreen users, like Cornerstone.
Using MoCaFi’s rent collection and reporting is beneficial to both landlords and tenants. Landlords can collect rent more efficiently, because the payments are deposited directly into their bank accounts. All payments are guaranteed when collected through MoCaFi, meaning no more bounced checks or lost payments.
Tenants can take advantage of efficient payment options with the MoCaFi app. By creating a MoCaFi account, tenants are automatically enrolled with the MoCaFi pre-paid Mastercard. They can load funds to this account through bank-to-bank transfers, direct deposits, mobile check capture, or cash loading. Then, they use funds in this account to securely pay rent directly to their landlord.
If the tenants are opted in to rent reporting, their monthly rent payments are reported to Equifax, meaning that on time rental payments can help renters build credit. HomeScreen partnered with MoCaFi so that the tenants that come through our screening service can use this tool to their economic mobility. Although housing is most American’s largest monthly payment, primarily only mortgage holders get to use that payment to build their credit score. MoCaFi provides the Cornerstone tenants that same opportunity. We look forward to continuing these relationships and seeing the effects of these programs!
For more information about HomeScreen, MoCaFi, or Cornerstone, contact Ella Gross at ella@towergrovecdc.org
