Rent2Buy.com announced on April 2 the beta launch of its "rent-to-buy" interactive marketplace, which allows consumers to apply the rental payment of large goods or luxury merchandise as a down payment toward the future purchase of these items.

The site was developed by Moti Kahana, creater of Automoti Group Inc., an online marketplace for consumers to directly purchase used cars at discounted prices. Automoti's solutions are used by the Hertz Rent2Buy program, which enables consumers to rent a car for up to three days prior to purchase.

"We are thrilled to introduce this concept to the online retail marketplace allowing consumers to 'test drive' virtually anything in the marketplace today," said Moti Kahana, CEO of Rent2Buy.com. "We saw tremendous success when Hertz applied our business model to the car rental space and we look forward to leveraging that to other industries which showcase a demand for the rent-to-buy option."

Consumers will also be able to purchase vehicles through Rent2Buy.com in 2011. Other big-ticket items that consumers can rent-to-buy through the Website include real estate, boats, designer fashions and jewelry.

Already popular among furniture and appliance sales, the rent-to-buy concept is especially appeals to customers in today's economy and provides them with the products they need without the financial strain often caused by an immediate or credited purchase.