Disruptive shifts in society and business occur with disruptive events that force widespread experimentation and a new way to do things. The same holds true for the Covid-19 pandemic which has changed the way we looked at education. The sudden shift away from the traditional classroom model of teaching has mixed reviews amongst both learners and educators.
While the impact of online education and its pros/cons have become buzzwords these days, online fee payment is an undervalued aspect. Imparting online education through remote learning models has become the new normal in India. However, when it is about accepting payments, a significant proportion of schools still rely on cash to accept school fees payment. This leaves no choice to the parents and learners but to pay fees in cash.
As per a KPMG’s study about online education in India, 26% of students are paying fees in cash, which also requires offline touchpoints. The remaining proportion of students is either paying fees online or looking for an online fee portal.
The need of the hour is the complete shift to online fee collection through an easy-to-use school fees payment portal. If you own a small school or are managing a big one, you must understand the need for selection of the right payment gateway for schools to enable online fee payments.
Urgent need to automate online fee payment collection
With 600 million individuals falling within the 0-25 age bracket, India has the largest concentration of youth in the world. On one hand, the pandemic has disrupted their plans to get education for a bright career. On the other hand, edtech companies are growing by leaps and bounds to make online education accessible to all.
The utilization of edtech in the new National Education Policy 2020 is also aimed at improved access to individually optimized learning. Underneath all this commotion, online fee payments are still given secondary importance.
Whether you are an educator or a part of school management, you cannot undermine the fact that school fees collection lies at the core of almost every learning activity. You can continue to impart quality education through either offline or online mode only if the targeted learners and their parents find it easier to make school fees payments online.
It becomes easy to streamline online fee payment collection by selecting the most suitable payment gateway.
What should you look for while selecting a payment gateway for schools?
Before you facilitate online fee payment for schools via a payment gateway, you should know how to compare and select the payment gateway provider. Given below are certain aspects that you should consider while you choose a payment gateway for schools:
Easy integration and instant activation
Ideally, you would want the selected payment gateway to have robust APIs and SDKs for easy integration into your school website or app. Once integrated, it should also support instant activation along with 100% online onboarding so that you can start with online fee collection quite easily.
Besides this, make sure you look for a payment gateway for schools that can be easily integrated with their existing ERP system without extensive coding requirements.
Maximum number of payment sources
For learners or parents wondering about how to pay school fees online, you would want to provide a payment solution that supports simple and convenient payment experience. In other words, it should make maximum payment methods available to them for payment. This way, they can pay using their preferred payment method – credit card, debit card, UPI, net banking, or digital wallets, like Paytm Wallet.
Also, check if your payment gateway supports digital wallets and Buy Now Pay Later facilities which are growing in popularity these days and allow 1-click checkout.
Industry-best payment success rate
The last thing you would want to deal with while allowing online fee collection is payment failures at the learner’s end. Hence, it makes sense to select a payment gateway that is based on robust technology and comes with direct bank integrations and intelligent routing to ensure a high success rate.
While selecting a payment gateway, check for maximum transactions per second it can support to ensure scalability and high success rate during peak fee payment season.
Established brand and trust amongst users
When you see other big brands in the country relying on a particular payment gateway, you feel assured that you will benefit from the payment solution it provides. The best choice for a payment gateway would be the one that can cater to diverse industries with its advanced payment technology. It would be great if the chosen payment solution is known amongst the masses, including both payers and merchants.
Timely settlements to your bank account
You might have heard of the instances in which educational institutions receive payment in their bank account a few days after the money has been deducted from the student’s accounts. If you do not want this to happen to you, select a payment gateway that offers a real-time settlement or next-day settlement facility.
Competitive pricing for online fee payment collection
In terms of payment gateway pricing, you would want a solution that offers 0% MDR on certain payment modes like UPI and RuPay debit cards to help you save money in the long run. In quantitative terms, you can save Rs. 97,700 every month with 0% MDR on UPI.
Recommended Read: MDR, PSP Fee, Interchange Fee, and Other Payments Charges – Explained
How can Paytm Payment Gateway streamline online fee payment collection for your school?
Paytm Payment Gateway is one of the most trusted payment solution providers having a user-base of more than 330 million users. Both businesses and consumers trust our payment gateway for the benefits it provides including:
- 100% online onboarding and instant activation
- Maximum payment sources supported – including Paytm Wallet and Paytm Postpaid
- 99.99% uptime backed by industry-best success rate
- Trusted by leading brands in India
- Next-day settlements with no holiday delays (real-time settlements also available*)
- 0% MDR on UPI and RuPay transactions
