Be sure to ask her what forms of payment she will accept. Most landlords in my area want the first month's rent and deposit paid by cash or money order/cashiers check, and wouldn't accept a personal check. Remember that personal transfers via Paypal are considered "e-checks"; they hold the money for up to five business days (and in my case where I accept the rent from my tenants via Paypal, they have held it for the full five days every single month) before it is released to the receiver, during which time it could still come back as insufficient funds, just like a regular check.

If you have a lease on this room, you should be pretty protected, although the safest answer of course is giving up the money when you receive a key in hand. I would use a cheque though so that there's a paper trail, or PayPal if that's acceptable to her.

Money Order or Cashier's Check! Get a receipt. If you are mailing it, make sure you send it certified so you can get a signature of acceptance AND make a copy of the check/moneyorder for your records!!

To answer your question more "generally"... You should pay with a check or money order. These provide you with a space to state what it is the money is being used for, and it allows you to maintain a copy of the payment. That way there is no question about how much was paid, what it was for, who it went to and where or who it came from.

Use a check, it is an easy method to track and confirm. That is the most common method for something like this.

Do you also have a signed lease?

Send the check that way you have a record and it has plenty of time to arrive. That is after all how you will be paying from now on.

electronic bank transfer seems the obvious choice!

ask her to text her bank account number and bank sort code to you.

if you dont have a bank account (get one!) ask someone to pay this for you!

Basically, I'm moving out for the first time by myself and I need some advice. I have sorted out where I want to live, study and everything else. I have found a room to rent and it's not exactly cheap but priced reasonably. I went to view it on Friday and liked the area and everything else and had no issues. Now the landlord texted me to confirm if I still want to move in so I said yes and she said it's available on the 3rd September. The landlord seemed like a very nice woman. The problem is, I'm supposed to be paying her the deposit by the end of this week as agreed but how should I actually pay it to her? I live in Liverpool currently and I'm moving to London so it's pretty far and very expensive to go there. So I was thinking if I did give her cash, she could give me a receipt in person but if I send her the money online (e.g Paypal) it would be on my Paypal record that I've sent her the money so if I ever had a problem, would that count as a receipt? Or should I send her a cheque? I have texts from her if I ever need proof of the fact that she wanted money for the deposit. Sorry if I'm just being paranoid but it's a lot of money (this is what Judge Judy does to you) and I just want to make sure. Any advice welcome, thank you.