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How to Take Online Payments for Schools

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The GoCardless content team comprises a group of subject-matter experts in multiple fields from across GoCardless. The authors and reviewers work in the sales, marketing, legal, and finance departments. All have in-depth knowledge and experience in various aspects of payment scheme technology and the operating rules applicable to each. The team holds expertise in the well-established payment schemes such as UK Direct Debit, the European SEPA scheme, and the US ACH scheme, as well as in schemes operating in Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand. See full bio

Last editedJan 20232 min read

Between money for lunches, field trips, and extracurricular activities, schools handle a high volume of everyday transactions. A good online payment system makes it easy for parents to log in and pay their fees with greater efficiency. In this guide, we’ll discuss a few of the benefits of online payments for schools. We’ll also give you a few options to help you choose the best system.

How to take online payment for school fees

In the past, most schools accepted cash or checks to pay for things like tuition fees and school trips. This required a cash register or POS system in the school office. Today, technology plays a strong role in education, and this extends to online payment solutions for schools. You might already use software to tackle administration and accounting, and many of these systems integrate with third-party payment platforms to facilitate billing.

Electronic point of sale systems or payment gateways help you manage school trips, meals, and tuition fees from an online central dashboard. They store student details safely in the cloud to facilitate both recurring and ad hoc payments using a variety of methods. You can combine these with POS hardware to take in-person cash and card payments in the school office.

What are the benefits of online payment services for schools?

Taking online payments offers an array of benefits for teachers, students, and parents alike. Parents can top up accounts with a set amount each week, pre-pay for meals, or set up installment payment plans for larger fees.

Benefits to schools include the ability to store customer sales histories for detailed analysis. Pupils don’t have to worry about losing their cash or running out of funds for meals. Digital wallets assigned to each student let parents pay for special events and sports activities from the same account.

Features to look for in online payment systems for schools

There’s a wide range of online payment services for schools out there. Some are focused purely on collecting recurring payments, while others will include additional features catering to educators. Here are a few of the features you might see when shopping around for the best online solution:

Customer-facing payment portal
Online event and activity registration
Tuition fee tracking and organization
Cloud-based storage for access on the go
Selection of secure payment methods

What are the best online payment solutions for schools?

Keeping the features mentioned above in mind, here are a few of the best ways to collect online payment for schools.

1. Zuora is a subscription management service that adapts well to modern education. It helps schools sell access to online coursework with a selection of pricing models, while automating the recurring billing for a steady stream of revenue. Zuora also offers detailed analytics and reporting to see how students are interacting with your services.

2. Chargebee is another subscription billing platform ideal for taking regular tuition payments. You can set up the course fee and collect it automatically each month, or let learners make variable payments at regular intervals. It lets you collect both web-based and mobile payments for greater convenience.

3. Infoodle is designed for nonprofits and churches, but adapts equally well to schools. In addition to integrating with accounting and billing software, it offers plenty of contact and event management features. Keep school calendars updated in real time, schedule use of school spaces, and generate your financial reports.

4. GoCardless is the perfect choice when it comes to taking online payments. We take the guesswork out of taking both recurring tuition fees and one-off payments for school trips and activities. Take payment directly from parent or student bank accounts using our direct debit solution. We also integrate seamlessly with all the software mentioned above as well as over 200 other partners. That means you can collect payment, schedule events, and manage your accounting systems all from a central dashboard.

We can help

GoCardless is a global payments solution that helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of financial admin your team needs to deal with. Find out how GoCardless can help you with one-off or recurring payments.