Valued at more than $43 billion in 2024, the American self-storage industry now boasts over 52,000 facilities offering a combined rentable space exceeding 2.1 billion square feet. This equates to more than 6 square feet of storage space per person. And while the sector has experienced explosive growth since it first began to take hold in the 1970s, it hasn’t yet reached capacity. Estimates project continued growth through 2030 and beyond.
If you’re an ISV developing software applications for the self-storage industry, you know there’s still plenty of opportunity to refine, innovate, and capture more market share, both for your company and your clients. This doesn’t mean that the competition isn’t steep, however. Differentiating your offerings—and thus your clients’ offerings to their customers—is the best way to remain competitive and future-proof your business.
Integrated payments are one key sweet spot. The more you dial-in automated rent collection and provide storage customers with the failsafe, proactive payment methods they prefer, the more profitable your clients’ businesses will be. So whether you’re developing facility management software, online rental and reservation platforms, tenant mobile apps, or auction and lien management tools—for large franchises, regional operators, or independents—perfected embedded payments are a must-have.
Payroc is a leading strategic payments partner dedicated to helping ISVs capitalize on industry trends and build scalable, innovative payment solutions that drive business success. We’re particularly known for the depth and breadth of our unattended payments expertise, making us an ideal fit for ISVs with portfolios that include projects in the self-storage space. As you know, self-serve technologies are becoming increasingly prevalent in this industry, and the trend includes multiple forms of unattended payments, ranging from online payments to autopay, self-serve kiosks, mobile payment apps, text-to-pay, and even smart locks with in-app payments. Your software must readily handle the full gamut of unattended payments—and handle them seamlessly—to get the job done.
So let’s take a closer look at embedded, unattended payments for self-storage ISVs and how you can make sure your integration is doing everything it can and should to help you succeed.
Payment Challenges in the Self-Storage Industry
As in most industries that got their start at the mom-and-pop scale, self-storage businesses often have challenges managing cash flow, processing payments after business hours, procuring and handling late payments, and more. Here are some of the most consequential payment issues we’ve seen in this sector—and ways your payment integration should help alleviate them.
- Unacceptable delinquency rates
In self-storage, this can happen when payment policies are overly flexible or payment integrations are not fully optimized. Staff time spent invoicing and chasing payments is expensive. The good news is that automated billing with account updater services, automated reminders, and other smart payments features can readily stanch this problem.
- Billing disputes and chargebacks
Tenants may argue over billing periods, price increases, or refund policies. When tenants dispute charges, this can lead to costly chargebacks. Effective payment systems can help counteract these vulnerabilities. By automating frequent, proactive communications with tenants—including things like billing reminders, coming rate hikes, thank yous for prompt payments, and more—savvy integrated payments can head off tenant dissatisfaction issues before they start.
- Cash and check handling issues
Facilities that still accept cash or checks must also take on managing theft risks, bank deposits, bounced checks, and employee theft. By switching to true omnichannel featuring unattended payments, businesses allow clients to pay digitally with the method of their choice at the time and place of their choice. Digital payments are not only more convenient and preferred by consumers, but they also offer better fraud protection and are less susceptible to human error and theft.
- Autopay enrollment issues and failures
If autopay features are not activated in your payments integration or are glitchy, customer participation will suffer, which in turn leads to more delinquencies and revenue-cycle challenges. Educating customers about the ease and time-savings of autopay can help, as can offering small discounts or incentives (such as a one-time sign-up bonus), which can easily pay for themselves within months. With the proper consent and opt-out disclosures in place (a critical reason to partner with an experienced unattended payments expert like Payroc), making autopay the default option is also a compliant payments technique that yields frictionless participation and cash-flow benefits.
- Evictions and liens due to nonpayment
For self-storage businesses, unpaid rent often forces eviction and lien auctions. Operators must follow state-specific laws for storage-unit auctions, adding legal complexity, but it’s important to note that payments can also be embedded into your software’s auction tools, making this inevitable part of the industry less onerous for owners and administrators.
Unattended Payments in Self-Storage: All the Ways
Several technological advancements are enabling self-storage ISVs to integrate unattended payment solutions into their software, including cloud APIs and payment SDKs.
- Payroc’s Cloud API, for example, supports seamless, plug-and-play integration with a vast array of devices from leading manufacturers, enabling ISVs to scale quickly without additional coding or certification.
- Payroc’s SDK offers the ISV advanced offline functionality, ensuring that payments can still be processed during internet or power outages, maintaining uninterrupted, 24/7 coverage.
Now that unattended payments are easy to implement and highly reliable, it’s a no-brainer to ensure your integration supports them. When your software provides self-storage tenants with all the payment options they prefer—like kiosk, mobile, or online—it drives customer satisfaction and more timely payments for your end users. And for you? It boosts your platform’s value, strengthens retention, and opens the door to additional revenue streams. In today’s market, offering these capabilities isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a competitive necessity.
Ideally, your payment integration would include:
- Online payments
To meet today’s customer’s high expectations, both facility websites and mobile apps should seamlessly accept credit/debit cards, ACH bank transfers, and digital wallets. When your software supports seamless online payments, it removes friction in the payment process—helping your clients get paid faster and reducing overdue balances. For you, it’s a powerful way to deliver more value, improve client retention, and drive adoption of your platform’s features.
- Autopay
Autopay functionality helps your clients reduce late payments, improve revenue predictability, and eliminate manual billing tasks. With secure tokenization and card account updater technology built in, payment credentials are safely stored and automatically kept up to date—minimizing failed transactions and support requests. For your software, it’s a low-maintenance, high-impact feature that drives client retention, recurring revenue, and long-term value.
- Self-service kiosks
Some storage facilities offer on-site kiosks for payments, rental sign-ups, account management, lease printing, and more. These kiosks, which are only growing in popularity and use, typically accept credit and debit cards (including tap-to-pay), digital wallets, and ACH bank transfers. Many also support QR code payments through hosted fields or payment links, along with features like autopay setup.
- Mobile apps
If you’re developing mobile apps for self-storage, full-featured integrated payments with excellent UI/UX and true omnichannel capabilities can go a long way toward enhancing the customer experience and prioritizing timely payments and thus optimized cash flow.
- Payment Links
Independent of or integrated with online payments and mobile apps, payment links allow automated invoicing via text or email link and tenant payment via a simple click. For ISVs, payment links are a quick-to-deploy feature that drives faster payments, reduces support friction, and expands the reach of your payment functionality without complicating the user experience.
- Smart locks with in-app payments
Facilities using Bluetooth or digital keypad locks have the ability to require payment before a tenant can unlock their unit. Customers can make payments in real-time through a mobile app to regain access.
The question is: Can your integrated payments partner do all that? Without these capabilities, your payment integration isn’t optimized to do all the work it can and should be doing.
More Considerations for Integrated Payments in Self-Storage Software
Of course, unattended payments expertise is not the only attribute you should expect of your integrated payments partner. Also be sure your provider checks these boxes:
- Seamless integration
Look for solutions that offer low-code/no-code integration, comprehensive API support, and minimal development lift. Detailed documentation and hands-on support further simplify integration, enabling faster deployment and reduced complexity for you.
- Security features
There’s no two ways about it: payments require robust security features. Ensure that your payments partner carries the burden of supporting PCI compliance, tokenization of sensitive payment data, and EMV chip functionality to prevent fraud. This allows you to focus on growth while resting secure in the knowledge that customer data is protected. When you rely on a payments partner with strong security credentials, your reputation is enhanced as well.
- Real-time reporting and analytics
Access to real-time transaction data and reports enables facility managers to monitor payments and quickly identify potential issues. For ISVs, offering comprehensive reporting features is crucial, as they allow operators to optimize revenues and make data-driven decisions. Also look for white-label reporting capabilities to enhance your brand presence and value.
How Payroc Sets Self-Storage ISVs Up for Success
Early in our history, Payroc chose to focus on unattended payments as a core competency. For interested parties, we are proud to share the extensive list of payment hardware devices certified to connect through our proprietary gateway; this makes both EMV chip transactions and contactless payments readily accepted in our systems on any number of payment terminals that may work best in your environment. We also have many years’ experience building seamless unattended payments integrations and working with ISVs to support mutual success.
- Scalability: Payroc supports unattended payments, mobile wallets, and omnichannel transactions.This allows your self-storage operator’s business to grow in any direction without friction or delay.
- Go-to-Market Expertise: We provide hands-on support for ISVs launching payments integrations. We help develop the go-to-market plan, provide partner training, support the pilot and GA launch, and participate in Quarterly Business Reviews. In short, we’re alongside you from beginning to end, helping ensure a successful launch and ongoing optimization.
- Flexible Business Models: Payrock supports referral, ISO, and managed Payfac models to align with different ISV needs. With Payroc Path, you have the best of both worlds. ISVs can bring their current payment processor to the payments integration, leveraging Payroc’s gateway while maintaining existing provider relationships.
- Revenue Optimization: Payroc offers several payment processing programs to assist self-storage venues in optimizing revenues. Transaction bundling is one. Instead of processing each individual transaction live, in real time, our system can be set up to aggregate transactions on a chosen schedule, such as at the close of business each day. This processing method results in lower overall processing fees per dollar processed. Payroc also offers RewardPay Choice, which allows venue operators to share credit card payment processing costs with customers. In these and other ways, Payroc help ISVs optimize profitability.
Why Self-Storage ISVs Must Act Now
For self-storage businesses, the shift toward unattended payments is not a passing trend—it’s an industry-wide transformation.
ISVs that invest in truly seamless payment integrations today will dominate the market tomorrow. The future belongs to ISVs that select the right payments partner—one that helps them optimize revenue, enhance operational efficiency, and deliver superior guest experiences. By embracing seamless, unattended, and omnichannel payments, ISVs can differentiate their platforms, drive adoption, and position themselves for long-term success in an evolving industry.
Payroc is the partner that makes it happen. We invite you to schedule a demo today.