If there is one space that had to go through an arduous overhaul due to the Coronavirus, it’s education. We call this arduous because it was no small feat for education powerhouses to deal with school fee collection as well as to ensure classes continue to happen. All this, right in the middle of the pandemic.
When schools and colleges temporarily shut down last year they had to quickly adapt to online classes via video conferencing. After all, teaching young minds can’t wait.
While schools have more or less taken care of the teaching part, their struggle with collecting school fees is far from over.
Digital payments are the future of school fee collection
Since last year, fee collection has been a major issue for schools and colleges. Traditionally schools and colleges have been collecting fees either in cash or cheque. Now because of Covid-19 parents’ visits to schools have thinned down considerably and understandably so. This has increasingly resulted in late payment of fees.
Schools and colleges use ERP systems to manage accounting, invoicing and database management but these systems do not come with a capable in-built payments infrastructure. The onus is on institutes to find the right payments platform to integrate with their ERP. Over the past year, educational institutes have started collecting fees digitally, but the experience is broken due to multiple factors.
Pain points of school fee collection:
- Limited payment modes for ad hoc fee payments: Schools are not able offer multiple payment options to parents, especially for ad hoc fee collection for events, seminars and workshops. Most of these payments are collected in cash or direct transfers to personal bank accounts. This results in missed and delayed payments and undue hassle for both parents and schools.
- Managing failed payments: Failed payments are often too common an occurrence when schools do not use a robust payments platform to accept online fees. Even then failures do happen, although very rarely. The reaction to this today is to manually reach out to the respective parents or student to re-do the payment with limited paymodes, a painfully tedious task.
- Fee reminders: Digitising reminders for school fee payments, something that has always happened offline, is a task that educational institutes have been struggling with since last year. Most institutes use WhatsApp, emails or event outbound calling to manage this, but again, setting up this communication is manual and time consuming.
- Manual account reconciliation: At the end of the month, schools have to manually reconcile all the payments they received between their accounting software and bank accounts. This can be easily automated with the use which will give better results. This is a waste of precious time and manpower.
Considering the number of pain points educational institutes deal with to collect school fees, it’s time they look at tech solutions around digital payments.
Paytm Payment Gateway has a suite of offerings for schools and educational institutes that will not only take care of all the payment woes, but make it a rather convenient way to collect fees.
What are payment links and how to use them for fee collection?
One of the easiest and fastest ways to collect school fees is through Paytm Payment Links.
Paytm Payment Links are digital payment requests that can be created in a few clicks. These payment links also double up as a payment reminder. Paytm Payment Links contain all the important information regarding payments such as money to be paid, particulars of the product or service, customer name, and different payment options.
Paytm Payment Links will specifically come in handy when schools have to collect money for events and seminars or even fee collection for sundry expenses such as books, uniforms, late fees for returning library books, etc.
Our tool makes it a no-brainer for school administration to send payment links to parents and for the latter to use the link and pay school fees with just a couple of clicks.
Paytm Payment Links can be created in minutes, and school administrators can be as detailed or brief with respect to the particulars of the fee.
How to create Paytm Payment Links
The first step to create payment links is to create an account with Paytm for Business. You will also have to verify your account by entering other details such as PAN, etc. If you already have an account, you can skip this process.
Log in to your account and click on the Accept Payment tab on the left side of the dashboard and click on Create Payment Links. You can also find the payment link tab on Paytm for Business app.
Also read: How to Create Paytm Payment Links from the Business Dashboard
Once you click on the payment link tab, you will get two options: Quick Payment Links and Detailed Payment Links. Choose one and fill in details such as the amount of money and details of the payment. After you are done filling in the details, click on the “Create Payment Link” button on the bottom. That’s it, your Paytm Payment Link is ready.
| Step-by-Step Guide to Create Paytm Payment Links | |
| Create Payment Link |
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Your Paytm Payment Link is ready to be shared with parents over email or any other channel such as WhatsApp or SMS.
Paytm Payment Links is an absolutely necessary tool for educational institutes to collect school fees as it allows parents to pay fees through their preferred mode of payment. Be it netbanking, credit card, debit card, UPI or through digital wallets like Paytm wallet, our payment link supports them all.
5 reasons why Paytm Payment Links are a must-have for schools and other educational institutes
At Paytm, we believe technology should do its magic without overwhelming users with its nitty-gritty. That is why we are constantly innovating and looking out to make our offerings as simple as possible to use. And Paytm Payment Links is the result of that same core principle.
If you are still wondering how Paytm Payment Links can solve the challenge of school fee collection, here are three reasons why it should be the must use tool:
- Easy to use
Schools and colleges can collect fees using Paytm Payment Links without having to create any webpage or app. From logging in to your Paytm for Business account, to creating and sharing the payment link with parents, all of it can be done in just a few minutes without any technical knowledge.
Moreover, you can create payment links from the desktop using Paytm for Business dashboard or from our mobile app.
- Convenient for ad hoc fee payment or managing failed payments
In addition to collecting monthly school fees, educational institutes also have to accept ad hoc payments for events, group trips, seminars, and paid guest lectures from esteemed personalities.
Since schools put in a lot of effort to organise these events it’s imperative they exercise the same level of enthusiasm to have a fool-proof method to accept payments for these ad hoc events.
Paytm Payment Links are quite convenient to collect ad hoc payments for these events as schools and colleges don’t need to create any website.
While we have made it easier for educational institutes to create payment links, it’s equally simple for parents to make payments. Parents get a myriad of payment options to choose from, ensuring schools get the money on time.
Schools and colleges can also make good use of Paytm Payment Links in case their usual payment methods fail. Quickly send the Paytm Payment Link to parents once the payment has failed. Since payment links already have all the required details filled in it’s convenient for parents to make the payment.
One added feature of Paytm Payment Links is that parents can use it for paying school fees even if they don’t have the Paytm app or are not a Paytm user. It’s truly a platform agnostic tool.
- Easily customise according to specific needs
While creating Paytm Payment Links, schools and colleges can add payment details such as school fees, late fees, maintenance fees, etc. This ensures that schools and parents are on the same page.
- Bulk payment requests
Schools and colleges have thousands of students and it would be really time-consuming for them to send payment links to each of their parents individually. That’s why we allow creating and sending bulk payment links from the dashboard. Please note that bulk Paytm Payment Links can’t be created using the app.
You can create a sheet on the Paytm for Business dashboard and enter all the payment details of up to 100 students and create all the payment links in one go. The dashboard also lets you share all the 100 Paytm Payment Links at once.
- Partial payments
Schools and colleges have students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. And if schools want to give parents who are going through financial constraints, they can ask them to pay the school fee in half.
While creating the Paytm Payment Link simply add the option of paying the school fee in half instead of full payment. When parents receive the payment link, it will show the full fee along with the option of paying it in half. When the time of paying the rest of the fee comes, you can send them a reminder along with the paytm link from the dashboard or app.
In the times of technological revolutions, schools and colleges don’t have to struggle with school fee collection. Begin the new year on a positive note and start using Paytm Payment Links now.
