Earn up to 3.56% APY2.  No account fees. No minimum balances.

Best Banks for Airbnb and Short-Term Rental Owners

Automatically generates when image is uploaded

Short-term rental properties can bring in some serious cash, but they’re a hands-on (side or full-time) hustle with a lot of moving parts when it comes to finances. Having the right banking platform for your Airbnb business can make all the difference.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the features you need from your business checking and savings accounts, and compare some of the best banks for Airbnb and short-term rental owners.

Key takeaways

  • A separate checking account for your Airbnb business makes tracking rental income and expenses easier.
  • The best banks for Airbnb hosts let you open multiple accounts so you can organize them for each property/unit, easily connect to short-term rental platforms, and have built-in financial reports to manage and track your cash flow.
  • Baselane is an all-in-one banking and finance platform for short and long term real estate investors with integrated and automated bookkeeping and rent collection.

What to look for in Airbnb banking

While traditional banks are starting to catch up, online banking platforms like Baselane, Novo and Relay are offering innovative features for Airbnb hosts, like multiple accounts per property, virtual debit cards and bookkeeping software integrations.

For this article, we’ve chosen to take a closer look at these features to help you choose the best bank for short-term rental properties:

  • Monthly Account Fees: Choose short-term rental banking with low or no account fees.
  • Multiple Accounts: This feature makes it easy to organize your finances by property.
  • Easily Open Accounts: Ideally, you can quickly open and add a new account online.
  • Built-in Expense Management: The best banks for real estate investors have built-in bookkeeping tools and integrations with accounting software.
  • Virtual Debit Cards: Many real estate investors prefer having a virtual card for each property to manage expenses.
  • Tax Reporting Features: The best banks offer quick and easy options for generating Schedule E reports and tax packages.
  • Connects to Vacation Rental Platforms: Check for connections to Airbnb and other vacation rental platforms so all your cash flow is in one place.
  • Banking Rewards: Earning interest and cash back will make your money work for you.

Best banks for Airbnb and short-term rental owners

Baselane

Monthly Account Fees$0
Multiple AccountsUnlimited checking and savings accounts
Easily Open AccountsOpen a new operating account in minutes and instantly add additional sub-accounts
Built-in Expense Management
Virtual Debit Cards
Tax Reporting Features
Connects to Vacation Rental Platforms
Banking RewardsUp to 3.56% APY2 and unlimited 1% cash back3

Baselane is the best short-term rental banking platform for Airbnb hosts. You can open unlimited accounts per property for multiple entities under one login to organize your income and expenses, savings, security deposits, reserves and more. Plus, you can pay bills and use physical and virtual debit cards with auto-tag rules to automatically categorize expenses.

What makes Baselane shine is its built-in automated bookkeeping that has real-time cash flow analytics and tax reporting. This means you can monitor and manage your Airbnb finances without paying for expensive software. But you can easily connect QuickBooks and other accounting tools if that’s what you like using.

Baselane also connects with multiple short-term rental platforms, including Airbnb, VRBO and Booking.com. Simply select Baselane for your payouts right in the Airbnb app or other vacation rental sites.

If you need online rent collection for any long-term rentals, Baselane has that too. On top of all that, you can apply for rental financing and short-term rental insurance right on the platform.

Novo

Monthly Account Fees$0
Multiple Accounts
Easily Open Account Requires a separate EIN and login
Built-in Expense Management
Virtual Debit Cards
Tax Reporting Features
Connects to Vacation Rental Platforms
Banking Rewards

Novo offers free online banking that integrates with apps like Stripe and QuickBooks Online, and includes an invoice tool you can use to collect rent. You can open multiple accounts, but each one requires a unique EIN (employer identification number). This means if you have multiple short-term rental properties under a single EIN, you can only open one Novo account. If you have separate EINs, you’ll need a separate login for each business.

Relay

Monthly Account Fees$0 - $30
Multiple Accounts20 checking accounts, 2 savings accounts
Easily Open Account
Built-in Expense Management
Virtual Debit Cards
Tax Reporting Features
Connects to Vacation Rental Platforms
Banking RewardsUp to 3% APY and 1.5% cash back

Relay is a banking platform for small businesses that supports up to 20 individual checking accounts, 2 savings accounts, and 50 virtual or physical debit cards for each account. The platform has some basic bookkeeping features, but you’ll have to use accounting integrations, like QuickBooks and Xero, to reconcile your transactions and prepare tax reports.

If you have more than a few Airbnb properties or a mix of short-term and long-term rentals, you may need more than 20 checking accounts to keep all of your cash flow straight.

Bluevine

Monthly Account Fees$0 - $95
Multiple Accounts5 sub-accounts
Easily Open Account
Built-in Expense Management
Virtual Debit Cards
Tax Reporting Features
Connects to Vacation Rental Platforms
Banking RewardsUp to 4.25% APY and 20% cash back (depends on plan and purchases)

Bluevine is an online banking platform that operates like a typical business checking account. You can apply online using a unique EIN and open up to 5 sub-accounts with dedicated account numbers for easy billing. Accounts on the basic plan earn 2.0% APY, but you’ll need to hand over a whopping $95 per month to get the top-tier rate of 4.25%.

Debit cards (no virtual debit cards available) earn up to 4% cash back on certain purchases, like gas and hotels, and up to 20% on select business services, including AT&T and Budget car rentals. You’ll have to sync transactions with QuickBooks or another accounting integration if you want to regularly reconcile your accounts.

Chase for Business

Monthly Account Fees$0-$95 checking, $0-$20 savings
Multiple Accounts
Easily Open Account
Built-in Expense Management
Virtual Debit Cards
Tax Reporting Features
Connects to Vacation Rental Platforms
Banking RewardsUp to 0.02% APY

With Chase Bank, you have several business checking account options that won’t cost anything if you meet the minimum balance requirements ($2,000-$100,000). Some checking accounts earn interest, but you’ll likely need a savings account to grow your money. There is no ability to have multiple accounts so you can organize your money for each property.

You can accept payments from other platforms, including Airbnb, and get associate debit cards by request. These cards don’t earn any cash back, but Chase has multiple business credit cards that offer cash back and rewards points on every dollar.

Although Chase caters to business banking, there’s no built-in expense tracking or tax reporting. Your options are manually reconciling accounts online with Chase, an accounting integration or good old-fashioned spreadsheets.

Bottom line

When you’re weighing the pros and cons of the best banks for Airbnb businesses, look for platforms that reduce the number of tools and logins you need. Ideally, you can organize your money, manage and categorize expenses, monitor cash flow and generate tax reports all in the same place.

You can do all of this (and more) with Baselane’s all-in-one banking and finance platform built for real estate investors. Want to see how Baselane can help you save time and maximize returns on short-term rentals? Watch a demo or sign up for free.

Share:
Link Copied!
in this article: