Digital payments are everywhere nowadays. From booking tickets at the movies to paying school fees. Schools were one of the last sectors to adopt payment gateways for fee payments. Now it has grown to a level where schools can’t imagine operating fee transactions without digital payments from parents. The global payment gateway market is expected to cross $50billion by 2025. By that time schools and education markets will be one of the major contributors to this valuation.
So what is a payment gateway? When you do any money transaction online, the transaction is coordinated by a payment gateway company. For example, when you pay for a taxi booking app, the payment doesn’t go directly to the bank of the taxi booking app. It will be processed by an intermediary company that accepts the payment from your card or bank and informs the taxi booking app that the payment is received successfully. The payment gateway company transfers the money to the company only after some hours. Because of the presence of payment gateway, you experience the transaction as instant.
So how can a payment gateway help in the success of your educational institution? Following is a list of benefits with brief descriptions:
Create a Quick and Steady Cashflow
Using payment gateways for your institution, you can ensure the cashflow availability far better than how it was earlier using demand drafts and cheques. Payment gateways transfer the collections of a day usually in the next few days and there are some payment gateways who transfer within a day. You can check with your payment gateway partner to understand more. So with the steady flow of incoming cash to the institution’s bank account, other activities can be planned & executed better using the resources usually allocated for fee collection and daily accounting.
Forget the Usual Troubles of the Traditionary Payment Process
When you are collecting fees as cash, cheques or demand drafts, there is a lot of human intervention and long queues required. This wastes the precious time of both administrators and parents. Also, the risks associated with cheques like non-clearance are nullified by moving to digital payment solutions.
Collect any Payments from Students and Parents Online
The application of payment gateway in your institution is not only limited to school fees, but also to any kind of payment from students and parents. It can be the sale of brochure and application form or collection of the admission fees. Once a payment gateway is dedicated to your institution, you can use it in various ways creatively.
Quick & Detailed Reports at Fingertips to Help with Decision Making
With the integration of digital payment gateway in your institution, all the reports regarding fee transactions will be available in a single dashboard. You can see the total fee collected today, last day, last week, etc. and can generate graphical reports also. You can also see any failed transactions or fee payments where the transaction is successful but fee receipts not generated. All these reports will be instantaneous and based on last-second transactions. The flexibility and richness of reports will vary from payment gateways to payment gateways.
Accept Payments from anywhere all Across the Globe
With the implementation of an online payment gateway, there are no boundaries for locations where parents can make payments. They can pay from any locations across the globe where internet connection is available. They just need a card or bank account that is compatible with the payment gateway, which will be clearly mentioned on the payment page. This is not only helpful for international parents but also for everyone who doesn’t have to travel to the school location and stand in a queue to make payments.
Your Payment Collections work 24/7 without any breaks
The traditional payment collections worked only during office hours. With the payment gateway, there is no limit on the working hours. Parents can pay early in the morning before leaving for their day jobs or late in the evening after returning from work.
No limits to the Payment Modes
Accept the payments from parents through multiple modes like Credit cards, Debit cards, Netbanking, UPI, different types of online wallets, etc.
Instant Communication and updates to Parents
The fee receipts for online transactions are generated instantly and the communication sent to parents in the form of SMS, emails or mobile app alerts. This helps the parents to understand whether the transaction was successful or not. There is no need to contact the school separately to collect the receipt. The ERP software integrated with the payment gateway will generate the receipts which can be downloaded and kept for further purposes.
Payment Gateway Integration features in SwiftTalk SchoolPortal®
SwiftTalk SchoolPortal® – The award-winning ERP software for educational institutions contains all the required payment gateway integration features for your needs. The payment gateway integration can be enabled for transactions in student fee collection, applicant registration fee collection, etc. The parents have the option to pay from their account even by using the mobile app.
Payment gateway integrations available with SwiftTalk SchoolPortal®
SwiftTalk SchoolPortal presently comes up readily integrated with the following payment gateways:
SwiftTalk SchoolPortal® also allows custom integration with most payment gateways of your choice without demanding major customization works. If you are looking for a school or college management software with a payment gateway of your choice, contact our experts today!
