What You Need to know: The Student Payment Landscape Post Pandemic

The pandemic has put a large financial strain on educational institutions. Schools now have to recoup the impacts of COVID-19 by developing strategies and implementing new tools that can help better manage cash flow as well as supporting attrition rate growth -- especially when it comes to their international student population.

No longer can institutions settle for the expensive, time consuming, and manual ways of traditional payment processing. The pandemic has changed the way students learn forever, and fintech’s, like PayMyTuition, are here to partner with educational institutions to ensure they are equipped with the most innovative technologies and payment solutions that students are now demanding for today.

4 ways the student payment landscape has changed and how institutions need to respond

1. Institutions must remove transfer friction for faster payments

The need for a full 360° solution with direct integrations into Student Information Systems is now at its peak. The team at PayMyTuition is taking the concept of seamless integration to the next level by being first to market with an all-in-one seamless solution that can offer institutions a set of products and services that integrate directly into institutions Student Information, AP and AR systems.

This all-in-one integrated solution removes the need for manual intervention or payment reconciliation from staff, reducing both time and costs for the school. With this integration, powered by AI, machine learning, and biometrics technologies, institutions can reduce the number of overall payment failures, which result from inaccurate student data input, giving them a single view on all student transactions and their cash flow for better and more accurate fiscal planning.

2. Students demand payment choice

Student tuition is expensive enough but when you pair that with also having to rely on banks for international tuition payment settlement, students are left with no alternative but to receive less than competitive foreign exchange rates due to traditional banking systems and models.

When it comes to fluctuating exchange rates in our current volatile marketplace, students are left vulnerable until their payments are completed, sometimes taking up to two weeks, and if their currency becomes unfavorable students are left to make up the difference.

PayMyTuition’s focus is on providing quick and easy local currency payment options for students while having the ability to provide low exchange rates and multiple transfer options including new and emerging payment alternatives, giving students choice while simultaneously helping institutions support attrition rates.

3. Eliminating added fees from student transfers with financial position detection technology

PayMyTuition’s financial position detection technology enables educational institutions to validate student beneficiary information and account balance status in real-time while simultaneously identifying student account fund availability, all before withdrawing or accepting a payment transfer from a student.

Financial position detection technology, incorporating elements of open banking, allows institutions to create a highly efficient payments process with instant account authentication for a more seamless and secure payment experience. It protects schools and students against overdraft and NSF fees with real-time funds verification and balance checks before any transfer can be initiated. Institutions can now verify students’ identities, instantly matching payments to student accounts, removing all manual intervention that school finance department staff would traditionally have to do.

4. Students need payments certainty to ensure transfers are safe and secured 

On top of fraud and AML, data breaches are becoming more frequent, bigger in scale, and more sophisticated. Advancements in identify verification, such as utilizing biometric verification technologies, create a highly secure way to verify someone’s identity and prevent hacker attacks as it uniquely identifies users by evaluating one or more distinguishing biological traits.

PayMyTuition’s solution for international payments ensures student transfers remain secure by utilizing biometrics and facial recognition technology for transaction screening and data transparency when processing payments for colleges and universities, providing them with a next-generation solution for their transaction screening processes.

This technology will also provide institutions with large and complete amounts of rich data including student information and payment statuses, of which they did not have visibility on before, making end-to-end payment transactions simple, transparent and secure.

In conclusion

At PayMyTuition we solve the complex challenges that educational institutions experience with traditional ways of processing student payments with our innovative, next-generation solutions. Contact a member of our team to find out how we can remove the friction within your international and domestic student payments business while saving staff resources and eliminating costs.