Is it normal for an apartment to not send you the lease agreement but ask for payments?

I put in an application for an apartment and seems like it got approved. I haven’t been sent over a lease to read or sign, but have been getting messages to ‘set up my portal to make payments online’. Now the place isn’t ready to August and I assume they want the holding fee, but I thought I would get to read the lease before doing that. Is this normal? I don’t want to put money down before reading the lease agreement