Trust and security

How Zenant handles your money and your data.

Plain answers to the questions landlords, tenants and applicants ask before they trust a new system: where rent goes, who sees bank details, what happens to application data, and how sign-in works.

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Rent is routed to the landlord, not to Zenant Bank logins never pass through Zenant No SSNs, no credit checks
Security overview

Four things to know before you sign up

Zenant is the software that runs your rentals. The sensitive parts, moving money and holding credentials, are done by specialist providers built for exactly that. Here is how the pieces fit.

Payments

Rent moves from the tenant’s bank to the landlord’s own account at a payment processor. Rent is never deposited into a Zenant bank account.

Bank connections

Bank details are typed into the processor’s own form and go straight to the processor. Zenant keeps the bank name and last four digits only.

Applicant data

Applications collect what a landlord needs to review. Zenant does not collect Social Security numbers and does not run credit or background checks.

Sign-in

Accounts are managed by Clerk, a dedicated authentication provider. Zenant never stores your password.

Payments

How rent moves through Zenant

Rent payments are processed by Moov or by Stripe, depending on when the account was set up. Subscription billing and the rental application fee run through Stripe. On Moov the payment is a single transfer into the landlord’s own Moov account. On Stripe it is a destination charge: the payment passes through Zenant’s Stripe platform balance and is transferred to the landlord’s connected account as part of the same charge. Either way, Zenant records the result and the money is not kept by Zenant.

  1. 1

    The tenant authorizes a payment

    In the tenant portal, the tenant links a bank account and agrees to a written authorization for a single payment or for autopay. The processing fee is shown before they confirm.

  2. 2

    The processor debits the tenant’s bank

    The payment processor pulls the amount from the tenant’s bank account by ACH bank transfer, or charges a card where the account supports it.

  3. 3

    Funds land in the landlord’s account

    The payment is credited to the landlord’s own account at the processor, opened in the landlord’s name during onboarding. It is never deposited into a Zenant bank account.

  4. 4

    The landlord’s bank receives the money

    The processor pays the balance out to the bank account the landlord verified during onboarding. Zenant marks the charge paid and updates the ledger.

What you can count on

The rules below are how the payment code is built, not aspirations.

  • Rent is never deposited into a Zenant bank account.
  • Zenant never sees or stores full bank account or card numbers.
  • Autopay runs only after the tenant accepts a written authorization, and the tenant can cancel it from the portal at any time.
  • Every charge, fee and status change is recorded against the lease and visible on the landlord’s Payments page.
What to expect on timing

Bank transfers take a few business days to clear. A tenant sees a payment as Paid as soon as their bank has accepted it, dated the day it was submitted. The landlord’s Payments page shows the same payment as Processing until the money settles, then as Paid.

If a bank returns a payment, both sides see it marked Returned with a plain-language reason.

One exception on holding money: the rental application fee is charged through Stripe. If a landlord has not finished payout setup, their share of that fee is held in Zenant’s Stripe balance and transferred once setup is complete. The Terms of Service spell this out.

Bank connections

Bank details go to the processor, not to Zenant

Two different things involve a bank on Zenant: linking an account to pay rent, and optionally verifying income during an application. Neither one sends a bank login or an account number to Zenant’s servers.

Linking a bank to pay rent

  • Tenants enter routing and account numbers in the payment processor’s own form, which sends them directly to the processor.
  • Zenant’s servers never receive those numbers. What Zenant keeps is the bank name, account type and last four digits, so the portal can show which account is on file.
  • Verification is handled by the processor, either instantly or with small test deposits that the tenant confirms.
  • Landlords connect their payout bank inside the processor’s hosted onboarding. Zenant never collects landlord bank details.

Plaid: income verification only

  • Plaid is used for one thing: optional income verification during a rental application. It is not used to move money or to link banks for rent.
  • The applicant sees a consent notice first and connects through Plaid’s own window. Zenant never sees the bank login.
  • Zenant retains only derived facts from Plaid’s income report: estimated monthly income, employer name and how many pay stubs it found. The report itself is not stored, and no account numbers, statements or transaction history are kept.
  • The temporary Plaid access token is used once to fetch the report and then discarded. It is never saved.
  • Applicants can skip verification. The application still goes through with income marked as self-reported.
Applicant and tenant data

What an application collects, and who can see it

Zenant is a review tool for the landlord, not a screening bureau. It collects what the landlord needs to make a decision and leaves out what it has no business holding.

What an applicant provides

Contact details, date of birth, current address and housing status, employment and income as the applicant reports them, references, the name of their bank (never an account number), a self-reported credit score if they choose to enter one, supporting documents such as pay stubs, and one photo of a government-issued ID.

Self-reported details are the applicant’s own statements. Zenant does not verify them unless the applicant opts into Plaid income verification.

Who can see it

The landlord the applicant applied to, plus the co-landlords and property managers on that landlord’s team. Vendors with a maintenance-only login cannot open applications or documents. Access checks run on the server for every request.

Where documents live

Uploaded documents are kept in private storage on Cloudflare. Nothing is publicly reachable. Each download uses a link that expires after 15 minutes and is only issued after Zenant confirms the requester is allowed to see that file.

What Zenant does not collect
  • Social Security numbers. The application API rejects them outright.
  • Credit reports, criminal background checks or consumer reports. Zenant does not run them and does not decide who gets approved.
  • Automated applicant scores. The landlord reviews the application and decides.
  • Bank account numbers or bank logins, as described above.

Zenant does not sell personal information. Applicants and tenants can ask to see or delete their information by emailing support@zenantapp.com.

Authentication

How people sign in

Zenant does not run its own password system. Sign-in is delegated to Clerk, and what each login can do is enforced on the server.

Clerk handles credentials

Landlord, team and tenant accounts sign in through Clerk, a dedicated authentication provider. Clerk stores credentials and issues sessions. Zenant stores no passwords, and sessions can be revoked centrally.

Roles limit each login

Owners invite co-landlords, property managers and vendors. Vendors see maintenance requests only, nothing about rent, leases or tenants. Every request is checked against the caller’s role on the server, not just hidden in the interface.

Applicants and invites

Applicants do not create an account. They open a one-time application link and confirm their email with a code before continuing. Tenants join through an invite sent by email or text that is tied to their lease.

The Activity Log in Settings records lease, rent, payment and application events with the name of the person who made each change.

Platform

Under the hood

The providers Zenant relies on, and the basic protections around them. Each provider receives only the data it needs for its job.

Who touches your data

  • Moov: rent payments by bank transfer
  • Stripe: rent and card payments, application fees, subscription billing
  • Plaid: optional income verification
  • Clerk: sign-in and sessions
  • Cloudflare: private document storage
  • SignWell: lease e-signature
  • Resend and Twilio: email and text notifications
  • Vercel and Railway: hosting for the app, the API and the database

Basic protections

  • All traffic to the app and the API is served over HTTPS.
  • Stored data on Railway and Cloudflare is encrypted at rest by those providers.
  • Every incoming webhook from a payment, signature or messaging provider is signature-checked before Zenant acts on it.
  • Public forms and document endpoints are rate-limited.
  • Request logs carry ids and statuses, never form contents or bank details.
  • Lease e-signatures run through SignWell, and signed copies stay downloadable from the app.

Questions we get asked

Does Zenant ever hold my rent?
Rent is never deposited into a Zenant bank account. On Moov, the payment is one transfer from the tenant’s bank into the landlord’s own Moov account. On Stripe, the payment is a destination charge: it passes through Zenant’s Stripe platform balance and is transferred to the landlord’s connected account as part of the same charge, so Zenant does not keep or use it. The only balance Zenant holds on purpose is a landlord’s share of an application fee while their payout setup is incomplete.
Is Zenant SOC 2 certified?
Not today. Zenant is an early-stage company and has not completed a SOC 2 audit. Our written information security, access control, data retention and vulnerability management policies are available under NDA, and we answer security questionnaires directly. Email support@zenantapp.com.
What happens to my information if I leave?
Signed leases, application documents and accounting exports stay downloadable from the app. Personal information is kept only as long as it is needed to run the service and meet legal, tax and financial-record obligations. Access and deletion requests go to support@zenantapp.com.
Found a vulnerability?
Please tell us at support@zenantapp.com with enough detail to reproduce it. We will acknowledge the report and follow up with you directly.

Have a security question? Ask us directly.

We would rather answer before you sign up than after. Send questionnaires, vendor reviews and anything this page did not cover.

Email support@zenantapp.comSee pricing
Privacy requests and account help go to the same address: support@zenantapp.com. Reviewing Zenant for a larger portfolio? See how a guided rollout works.