Vaccine is Here. Why Colleges and Universities now need a Fintech Approach to Student Payments and Refunds.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a gap for many colleges and universities across Canada. Not only did schools need to find an efficient way to operate with the transition to online learning paired with most staff working remotely, the increased requests for refunds and needing to find a way to transition tuition and fee payments to a contactless format for the safety of students and staff overnight, created yet another challenge to remain operational and protect attrition rates. 

Colleges and universities require a new contactless way to process payments and refunds so that they can be applied faster, safely, and more securely, while at the same time, prioritizing the savings of institutions time and money on overall processing fees. When it comes to traditional ways for schools receiving international and domestic payments from students, they usually are received through wire payments. These payments received by the school’s bank often lack sufficient information to identify and post upon receipt. Due to this, extensive research is required by staff to determine which student’s money was received creating extensive delays, potentially affecting student’s ability to register for classes.

When it comes to refunds the process is even more challenging. When a student requests a tuition refund educational institution’s undergo high processing fees, heavy paper pushing and data acquisition, and manual backend accounting updates and entries. This process can last a tedious one to three weeks to refund tuition payments back to the student. During a pandemic, this process is lengthened and intensified.

Its time for schools to revolutionize their international and domestic student payment and refunds strategy.   

Colleges and universities need a new solution that can provide efficiencies to simplify all aspects of their student payment and refund processes. With rising concerns about maintaining student enrollments and preserving tuition revenue streams in an uncertain environment, the need to find an innovative third-party platform provider to implement an all-in-one solution for international and domestic tuition payments should be a top priority for institutions.

When looking to move quickly and identify the right business partner that has the innovative solutions to solve these challenges for educational institutions, fintech’s are the obvious choice, and PayMyTuition is the only partner that can provide a suite of products to not only solve, but enhance, a school’s total student payment offering while having the ability to directly integrate, by way of real-time APIs, into their student information systems.

At PayMyTuition our goal is to develop innovative solutions that are designed with educational institutions in mind. By way of our Payment Wheel solution, a set of innovative domestic and international solutions including tuition payments, refunds, payment plans, and a next-generation vendor payment module, all with direct integration into educational institutions student information and AP systems, we solve the complex challenges that schools experience with traditional ways of payment processing.

Why you require an all-in-one solution set, like PayMyTuition’s Payment Wheel, for your payment processing needs:

1. A streamlined domestic and international payment process
PayMyTuition’s Payment Wheel offers students and schools multiple domestic payment options for paying tuition and fees including Interac bulk requests for money, bill payments, pre-authorized debits, EFT’s, wires, credit cards, and payments through various e-wallets. This domestic payment product, combined with our international payments solution that removes the friction from international tuition payments across 140+ countries in 100+ currencies, offers an all-in-one solution for schools and students alike.

2. A next-generation domestic and international refund solution 
By way of PayMyTuition’s newly developed AI and machine learning technology, this refund solution removes manual and multi-journal accounting entries within AP systems so students can get refunds faster, safely, and securely, while saving institutions time and money on overall processing fees. In addition, the domestic refund solution utilizes Interac bulk payment e-transfers, removing the need for manual cheques, to allow for the efficient processing of domestic refunds to students across Canada.

3. Multi-tiered domestic and international payment plans
PayMyTuition’s domestic and international Payment Plans provide students with increased flexibility to better manage tuition and fee payments when it comes to paying for their higher education. PayMyTuition’s innovative payment plan solution not only provides flexibility on payment scheduling for students with personalized installment plans and various payment methods but enables students to pay for tuition and fees in local currencies ensuring they have the most cost-effective way to pay for tuition, allowing them to better manage cash flow. 

4. A modernized domestic and international vendor payment module 
PayMyTuition’s innovative vendor payments module can be directly integrated into both ERP and A/P systems providing account payable automation that effectively manages and runs compliance checks on all vendor account information. It manages school’s multi-currency accounting requirements, allowing them to invoice and pay suppliers in alternative and vendor preferred payment methods, eliminating the need for AP reconciliation. This next-generation technology provides fund settlement to domestic and international merchants in less than twenty-four hours, helping institutions better manage cash flow and protect themselves from market volatility.

In conclusion
At PayMyTuition we solve and eliminate the complex challenges that educational institutions experience with traditional ways of processing student payments. 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.