In the US, is it normal to not include an electronic way to pay rent?

Is it normal that rent cannot be paid using electronic methods such as a credit/debit card, or a bank transfer, or Paypal, or anything electronic?

It's fairly common, especially with smaller companies/independent landlords. Many of the other more convenient payment methods carry transaction/merchant fees, and many landlords don't have the kind of transaction volume necessary to negotiate fees low enough to make those options attractive. I've accepted Zelle in the past but many banks have daily limits on payments that are below monthly rent, so tenants can't pay rent in one transaction.

Can checks be obtained without going into a physical bank?

I've banked with two online only banks and with both I could buy a checkbook online and have it mailed to me, or I could have the bank mail checks to people on my behalf at no cost.

Is it normal that rent cannot be paid using electronic methods such as a credit/debit card, or a bank transfer, or Paypal, or anything electronic?

It's highly dependent on the landlord/property manager.

Can checks be obtained without going into a physical bank?

Yes: online bill payment. (I configured my online bill payment service to automatically snail mail a check to my landlady.)

I don't have statistics handy, so I don't know what percentage of landlords want a paper check. But it's certainly not unheard of. Especially if the landlord is a small time operation with just one or two properties.

As to can you get checks without going to a physical bank, sure. I haven't gone to a bank office to buy checks in decades. There are companies that sell checks on-line. As part of the order process you have to tell them your routing number and account number so they can print it on the checks. But you order on line and they mail them to you. My bank's web site has a menu option to order checks on line. I've never used it so I don't know the process, but I don't have to physically go to the bank even if I want to order from the bank.

Another option you may have is to have the bank mail them a check. My bank lets me direct them to make payments on their web site. I get on the web site and say to send however much money to this person or company, this address, and here's my account number. If the person or company I send it to has things set up with the bank, they'll do an electronic transaction. Otherwise they print and mail a paper check. I can see on the web site which way they sent the money, but it doesn't matter. I don't do anything different. And if some business I'm paying signs up to get the money electronically, they'll just automatically switch from sending paper checks to doing it electronically. I don't have to know or care.

I make contributions to my church and my cleaning lady this way all the time, so I don't have to bother hand-writing a check, putting it in the mail, and paying postage. I've used this to send money to relatives. Etc. With my bank, it's a free service. They don't even charge me for the postage to mail the check. Probably because they save more by not having to pay someone to handle the check then the cost of printing and postage. I wouldn't be surprised if some banks charge some sort of service fee for this.

Afterthought

These days I almost never actually write a paper check. The only people I can think of that I send a paper check regularly is my local newspaper: they don't have any way to pay online, and I can't have the bank send them a check because there's a form where I have to specify some details. Everybody else I either pay through the recipient's web site or I pay through the bank's web site. At one point I moved and I didn't even bother to order checks with my new address on them for 8 years, because I was writing so few checks it was easier to just cross out the address and hand-write the new address. :-)

As of 2016 in the U.S., 42% of rent payments are made by check, 22% by cash, 16% by money order (so: 80% by some physical paper transaction). Only 20% or less were by electronic payments.

https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-data-report/2016/how-do-people-pay-rent.aspx

This is not exactly the same as landlords refusing electronic payments. But anecdotally, it's my experience that landlords only provide a single venue for payments. In 30 years of renting in a variety of states, I've never had a landlord suggest electronic payments as an option to date. In short, I'd say that exclusively paying by physical paper is indeed "normal".

Yes it is typical and common in rentals to not include options for electronic payment in the US. I found this to be true with small scale established (older) landlords in the greater Seattle area, San Francisco and personal check was required, often only a single check was accepted making payment that much more work in shared housing. Larger property management companies typically have some sort of IT solution which provides electronic payment and as I recall in California in the Pleasanton/Dublin area required its use (and was poorly implemented with questionable security). This is prior to the pandemic and may bring about other patterns due to changes in supply and demand.

Just one other tack that I didn't see in the other answers: If someone refuses to pay rent, it takes months of annoying work to evict them and even then the recalcitrant tenant might do a bunch of damage. But if someone writes you a bad check, there's a whole new pile of laws that you can bring to bear on them. Even if you don't have any money, creditors want you to write them a check. Because now they can prosecute you for fraud. It's a much bigger hammer. A "check only" policy pre-establishes this relationship. "But couldn't I pay with PayPal just this once?" No, that's a crack in the dam, and I don't see why, if you have the funds in PayPal, you can't get your act together and arrange for a check.

I have been a landlord, I have no idea how I would have gone about accepting electronic payments and most of my renters paid cash because they didn’t have checking accounts. When paid with a check, I went to their bank to cash it to ensure that it wouldn’t bounce and if offered a check from out of my area, I would have refused it and asked for cash or money order. Haven’t been a landlord for a while, but under the same circumstances, I would follow the same process today.

Online ordering of checks has been possible since at least the mid 90’s. The format of checks has been standardized because of electronic processing since 1955, it was never a profitable part of the banking industry, it was just something they had to do in order to do business. Some banks don’t even allow you to order through them.

Can checks be ordered without going in to a physical bank?

No doubt you can call your bank to order checks. However, the bank's checks are often overpriced.

According to a large check producing company, Designer Checks, you can order checks from them for your bank account without having ever ordered checks from your bank: https://www.designerchecks.com/faqs/

Every bank with which I have a checking account has a “Bill Pay” feature within their online banking portal, which allows users to have a paper check sent, by mail, to any address, at no cost. We have used this feature to pay music teachers, local farms, and others who prefer to receive paper checks. Of course you have to allow for 5-7 days delivery time, but for something regular and predictable like a rent payment you can schedule a recurring payment and have it sent out automatically every month.

Yes, paper checks are quite typical. That's how I paid rent from 2012 till the end of 2017 and then I bought a house.

If the landlord is worried about Covid on checks then they're presumably worried about Covid in the mail so the mitigation strategy shouldn't vary.

If the landlord is worried about Covid then they should buy a UV lamp to disinfect envelopes and checks before they touch them.

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Having been involved on the merchant side of things with PayPal I would say that the hassle of not triggering false fraud far outweighs any perceived inconvenience of using checks.

If you're a new merchant then you can easily get your funds frozen for up to 6 months and no amount of pleading will undo that. Do you really think a landlord wants to risk getting funds frozen for that long?

PayPal heavily favors the consumer so a single complaint could cost them access to thousands upon thousands of dollars until things have cleared up.

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You being unaccustomed to checks is not a good reason for a landlord to start risking their money.

Order some checks and call it a day; a box (100 checks) will cost around $5-$10 and would last you almost 10 years.

Do you really want to be known as a "problem" tenant from day one?

Can checks be obtained without going into a physical bank?

Many people have noted that you can order checks online. This can be done from your bank or via third parties.

I'll note that technically, you can also print checks at home. This does require a check-printing template/application (e.g., Microsoft Office), but it's not especially complicated. Typically, consumer-grade printers, even high end ones, cannot create checks to the same standard as check-printing companies. However, home-printed checks are still checks, both in a legal sense and in a, "can people cash them" sense. And unlike many starter checks, home-made checks will actually have your name/information.

I'll note that most home-made checks feel a bit "off, " so not everyone will accept them. I don't recommend this approach as anything except as an interim solution in an emergency.