For education
As the world’s largest global payments specialist, Travelex is dedicated to making foreign exchange transactions easier for the Education Sector.
Our solutions aim to ease the pain of collecting and tracking student fees, assuring that all remittances are timely and accurate. This means that instead of spending time processing, you can concentrate on more pressing educational matters. To find out more click on the links below: You can also download a copy of our brochure. If you’d like to make an appointment with one of our specialists, please call
0845 300 9820 or email us at education@travelex.com.
- Reduce costs and simplify the process of fee collection.
- Incoming international payments.
- Clear US Federal Loan Cheques faster and reduce your risks.
- Electronic file uploads to your internal (ERP) systems.
- Standard foreign exchange services.
- Global partnership with specialists.
- Complete transparency of costs for students, parents and sponsors.
Reduce costs and simplify the process of fee collection
Remember the problems of managing manual enrolment? You don’t want to. But in recent years, things have changed for the better. Educational institutions which accept foreign students can now enjoy far simpler enrolment and registration procedures. Modern automated processes let you store, monitor and retrieve complex student records with pinpoint precision. Easy-to-use online initiatives not only save you costs, but valuable staff resources too. Managing your students’ fee payments – collecting and tracking is itself costly. Misdirected, slow or inaccurate international payments. typify outmoded and non-specialist foreign exchange. Travelex understands the risks. We know that inaccurate payments to and from foreign locations can cost you enormously: in lost, delayed or inaccurate revenue, not to mention potential damage to good international business and student relations. That’s why we’ve come up with a new suite of foreign exchange services specially created for the education sector. They’re designed to ease the pain of collecting and tracking student fees. All remittances are timely and accurate, freeing precious resources for more pressing matters. The average university, with an intake of around 400 overseas students, could save £50,000 a year in fee processing costs by adopting Travelex payment solutions
Incoming international payments
Students can opt to pay by DCC (Dynamic Currency Conversion)With DCC, a student, parent or sponsor uses a credit card online. Highly transparent and website- integrated, DCC immediately shows a student or other payer the amount that will be debited from their credit card, in their home currency. Contrast this with an ordinary credit card transaction, where a student, parent or sponsor makes a credit card payment online, the amount is normally displayed in sterling, with the local currency value unknown until receipt of credit card statements (usually 30 days later). Only then will payers know of any extra bank charges. With DCC payment, amounts are locked, with payers’ credit cards immediately debited in their home currencies. We’ll also compensate up to 1% to help offset any credit card fee or MSF. For 400 new overseas students per year, this can mean around £28,000.
Students can also pay by wire which lets them pay invoices in their home currencies and immediately see the total costs. A wire payment can also cut 2% from the cost of processing 20% of your students’ tuition and accommodation fees. For a yearly average intake of some 400 new overseas students, this can mean a saving to you of around £11,000.
Both DCC and wire payments – on the surface two separate systems – are in practice handled by a single application, thereby:
- Lowering your implementation costs
- Minimising your own IT resource
- Allowing seamless integration to existing student records systems and websites
To help you even more, we’ll provide dedicated resource to ensure smooth implementation. With DCC, we can integrate withmarket leaders for transaction authorisation and processing.
Whichever payment method the student selects, Travelex ensures that all stages of the payment are confirmed to both you and the payer by email Reports are also uploaded directly to your student records. All sterling credits are identified by a system of unique reference numbers; usually student ID’s or payment ID’s generated by your debtor ledger. We’ll also send reminder emails to the student, parent or sponsor if payment hasn’t been initiated within an agreed period.
Clear US Federal Loan Cheques faster
American students often get Federal Funding for their UK education. Working with leading US student loans providers, we’ll ensure these funds are cleared and credited to your account within 4 working days instead of up to six weeks*. Manual processes are automated and your cash flow is enhanced, and there’s no need to open special foreign currency accounts. This gives you the opportunity to credit the student accounts much quicker, reduce the risks associated to outstanding debt, and allocate the funds towards tuition and accommodation fees more efficiently. For total transparency, we’ll provide a fully-referenced statement which makes it easy for you to identify and allocate funds. Our online system will log the cheque and get the prevailing exchange rate.
Electronic file uploads to your internal (ERP) systems
When foreign invoices need to be paid for accommodation, research, tutors, courses and overseas student recruitment marketing, we’ll process your accounts payable (AP) file, relieving you of the costs and complexities of managing various currencies for different beneficiaries.
If you pay regular overseas invoices – for accommodation, research, tutors, courses and student recruitment marketing – this process could save your accounts payable (AP) department countless hours in manual administration.
You simply:
- Generate an AP file using an industry-standard accounts package (such as Sage, SAP, Oracle or Agresso).
We:
- Collect and process it, so you no longer have to manually source various currencies to pay different beneficiaries.
- Send back a standard-format file to be imported into the accounts package for reconciliation and accounting.
- Pick up your AP file, disburse payments on your behalf, then close-off the open accounting entries by feeding back a ‘statement’, complete with appropriate references, into your AP system.
To make the actual cost of each invoice clear, multiple systems must be searched. However, by integrating your ERP with our online payment system, you can more effectively manage invoices, and match and reconcile payments. We do this by delivering regular payment statements in standard formats, covering enterprise settlements and beneficiary payments. This also means more effective bank statement reconciliations and payment investigations.
Standard foreign exchange services
Travelex offers a number of choices to suit your payment requirements. You can choose from:
- For non-urgent, low-value payments:
A draft is a foreign currency cheque issued on a foreign bank account directly to or from your address, or to or from the final beneficiary. - For urgent, high-value payments:
A wire is an electronic transfer, sent straight to your beneficiary’s bank account in the chosen currency. - For immediate order and payment:
A spot deal is a booked transaction which uses the prevailing exchange rate of the day. A Travelex dealer quotes online or over the telephone and your transaction’s done immediately. - For immediate order and later payment:
A forward contract is an agreement to buy or sell an amount of foreign currency at the day’s prevailing rate, for payment up to one year in the future. There are two types of forward contract: fixed and open.
A fixed forward is useful if a payment has to be settled on a particular date or if there’s a balance-sheet hedge (where the risks are reduced of translating balance-sheet assets and liabilities into foreign currencies).
An open forward can be used if a series of payments in the same currency are planned over the course of a year.
Global partnership with specialists
We’ve partnered with experienced specialist technology providers like Tribal and Parent Pay. Tribal’s tailored, 5-module SITS:Vision is used by more than 60% of the UK higher education market, including the universities of York, Bath, Warwick and University College London. With these partnerships, we can fuse our core foreign exchange expertise and global reach with the knowledge of software developers who specialise in the education sector.
Complete transparency of costs for students, parents and sponsors
When a credit card payment is made online through a bank, the amount is normally displayed in sterling, with the local currency value unknown until receipt of credit card statements (usually 30 days later). Only then will payers know of any extra bank charges. For example, settling a £15,000 bill by credit card could incur up to 5%in fees. This would increase the cost of the transaction by a further £750. When a sterling wire is in transit, banks often take further charges. Unaware of this, the student still owes money on arrival, causing further delays in enrolment. Our online service instantly converts the fee amount into the student’s home currency. If paying by wire, the student sees precisely what’s owed as a fixed settlement figure; we never deduct extra charges or merchant service fees (normally 1.8% to 3%) – nor do our banking partners. The rate is fixed for 72 hours, giving the student ample time to pay into the Travelex account.
