Skip to main content

Don’t want to pay for your rental before your vacation? Airbnb can help

airbnb pay less up front stock

If the idea of paying for your entire vacation before you go on vacation makes you want to not go on vacation, fret not. Airbnb hears you. The short-term rental platform introduced a new way for you to pay for your upcoming rentals by not paying in full. It’s aptly named Pay Less Up Front, and as you might suspect, allows you to pay less than 100 percent of the cost at the time of booking.

Up until now, in order to reserve a bed, a room, or an entire property on Airbnb, folks had to pay for the entirety of their stay before ever setting foot in their temporary home. But now, the company is allowing customers (in some instances) to pay a 50 percent deposit, and then pay for the rest as checkout approaches. This ability to offset cost might encourage customers to book more expensive rooms, making it a good play for Airbnb.

Related Videos

“The new feature extends our commitment to providing flexible payment options to more guests, and greater opportunities for hosts,” Airbnb noted in a blog post. “In our testing of Pay Less Up Front, we saw a clear demand for more convenient payments: Given the option of paying less up front, 40 percent of guests chose to do so, and opted for higher-value bookings on the whole.”

Airbnb also found that the new feature encouraged users to book further in advance, which helps hosts both secure and manage their reservations more seamlessly. The new option is now available for all users on iOS, Android, mobile-web, as well as desktop. Be warned, however, that there are some prerequisites for the payment plan. The total stay must total at least $250, and you’ll have to plan ahead a bit, booking at least two weeks (14 days) in advance.

There is one aspect about Pay Less Up Front that has not been clarified, as the Verge pointed out. Airbnb hasn’t made clear whether the 50 percent deposit upfront actually guarantees your stay — sometimes, hosts have the option of accepting but later rejecting a booking if they realize they can get a better price. We’ll update you when we determine whether or not this is the case with the latest feature.

Editors' Recommendations

Don’t be fooled if your smart speaker asks for your password
dont be fooled if your smart speaker asks for password stealing passwords with alexa srlabs video screenshot

Your smart speakers could be listening for way more than you want them to. Recently, Security Research Labs (SRLabs), a hacking research group and think tank based in Germany, released a report on their findings that Alexa and Google Home expose users to phishing and eavesdropping due to third-party skills and apps. The labs found two possible scenarios that can be played out on both Amazon Alexa and Google Home where a hacker can listen to your interactions with your smart speaker and phish for sensitive information. They dubbed the vulnerabilities Smart Spies, recorded their results, and put them in four videos to explain how they work.

Basically, a hacker can make a third-party app that can trick users into giving away certain information or keep listening after ending a task with the user, using the speaker's built-in voice command system. In their tests, using these vulnerabilities, SRLabs was able to request and collect personal data, including user passwords, and eavesdrop on users.

Read more
Line Pay’s global digital Visa card helps it take on Apple, Google, and Samsung
Line AI logo

Messaging app Line is pushing ahead with its financial technology plans, and has announced a wider partnership with Visa to integrate not just contactless payments, but to add a prepaid digital Visa card into the app itself. What’s more, Line states the service will be available to all the 187 million people globally using its app, a departure from many previous additional features from Line — such as Line Music, and the Clova smart home products — which are often only available in its core Japanese, Taiwanese, or Thai markets.

The new Line Pay and Visa feature will let you apply for a digital Visa card that will be stored in the Line app, ready to make payments with any of Visa’s 54 million merchants around the world. A screenshot of the new feature shows the option to add money or to send money, below an image of a Line Pay-branded Visa card. In the future, you will be able to add other Visa cards to the service.

Read more
Bitcoin mining profits are on the rise. But don’t buy your own hardware just yet
bitcoin stock

Bitcoin mining isn't anywhere near the money-making machine it was just over a year ago, but thanks to some larger players bowing out as profits fell, they have now begun to rise once again. Gross margins -- the difference between earnings and the total cost of investment -- rose to 39 percent in February, the first time it's risen at all in well over a year.

It's been a long time since mining Bitcoin yourself was a simple and profitable venture (although there are ways to do it). While the early days of the cryptocurrency saw people mine hundreds or thousands of Bitcoin with home computers, today if you aren't investing hundreds of thousands in the latest hardware and have a plentiful supply of cheap electricity, you're going nowhere fast. As The Next Web suggests, the adoption of new, more efficient technology is likely to be the driving force of Bitcoin's mining resurgence, by forcing out older, less efficient hardware, as well as a relative stabilizing of the value of individual Bitcoins.

Read more