PayPal and Bilt will let users pay rent and mortgages through Venmo starting early 2026

PayPal is partnering with Bilt Rewards to let users pay rent and mortgages through Venmo starting in early 2026. This adds Venmo to Bilt’s existing payment lineup, which already supports credit cards, debit cards, and direct bank transfers.

Bilt claims its system is already linked with over 40,000 merchants and 70% of the top 100 U.S. property managers.

The new deal means tenants and homeowners will be able to use Venmo to make payments the same way they already split rent or utility bills with roommates.

According to PayPal’s general manager of consumer, Diego Scotti, “Millions of people already use Venmo to split rent with roommates and pay their landlords. Now we’re making that experience even more seamless and rewarding.”

Bilt’s Chief Executive Officer, Ankur Jain, said the partnership merges the wide user base of one of the most used peer-to-peer payment tools in America with Bilt’s reward-based rent network.

According to Bloomberg, Venmo wants to become the default payment method for both consumers and merchants, as well as expand into in-person transactions and e-commerce, so PayPal sees the rollout as a chance to lock Venmo into the housing market, where monthly payments are steady, large, and consistent.

PayPal links with Mastercard to power AI-driven payments

In a separate development, PayPal is stretching its collaboration with Mastercard yet again, this time to introduce AI-powered transactions through Agent Pay, the platform that lets consumers make purchases guided by AI assistants.

Mastercard’s “secure payment” rails will back the process, integrating directly into PayPal’s branded checkout wallet, and will extend to all Mastercard co-branded cards that already operate within PayPal’s network.

PayPal will pilot Mastercard’s Agent Pay Acceptance Framework, which verifies and secures AI-initiated payments, but the integration relies entirely on tokenization and passkey authentication, allowing AI agents to authorize transactions safely and merchants to accept those payments without extra technical setup.

In its statement announcing the development on Monday, Mastercard said this system will “undoubtedly reduce friction and expand consumer choice as AI-driven commerce becomes mainstream.”

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