Strengthen your student experience with multi-channel, cashless payments

Colleges handle a wide range of payments on a daily basis from various types of customers, including students, teachers, parents, grandparents, carers, and businesses.

Each demographic has its own preferences when it comes to making a purchase. Whether covering the cost of term-time activities or tuition, further education institutions should think carefully about how best to cater to different payment needs and scenarios. 

Providing a range of payment options helps to maximise revenue, while also fostering a better overall experience for students, staff and families. People today expect slick digital experiences as standard, and the majority of transactions completed in the UK are now cashless. In fact, the latest forecast from Statista predicts the volume of cashless payments will grow by a further 41% over the next four years. 

That makes now an ideal time to review your payment processing systems to determine whether they’re agile and scalable enough to match evolving demands – here are a few things you should be considering.  

Why offering payment options matters 

It doesn’t need to be a headache for your finance and accounting teams. One of the main benefits of investing in payment processing for education is that modern software provides seamless integrations and automated processes to support your staff.  

Modern payment processing solutions for further education institutions are designed to handle the complexity of managing data from different sources, whether that’s card payments, Direct Debit, bank transfer, digital wallets, open banking, phone transactions or in-person cash payments. 

Other benefits include more streamlined processes, quicker payment processing, ease of generating reports and improved accuracy with no need to manually rekey data. That frees up more time for internal resources to focus on other value-added tasks.  

Navigating PCI DSS compliance 

Changes to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) guidelines came into effect on 1st April 2024, which means that colleges now need to abide by a new set of security demands, best practices and validation methods. Organisations must familiarise themselves with updated rules around: 

• Multi-factor authentications 
• Mandatory password and encryption measures 
• Enhanced security training for staff  
• Significant changes to the compliance questionnaire 

Having a reliable, secure income management system makes it easier to fulfil these demands and maintain constant access to a detailed audit trail that demonstrates compliance at any time. Trying to operate without this means risking additional monthly PCI charges or potentially having the ability to process card payments withdrawn completely.  

And if there’s a breach in your payment systems, significant fines and huge reputational damage are very likely to follow.  

Catering for cash and phone payments 

Rather than digital wallets and contactless payments, many people still prefer traditional payment methods such as phone payments. However, taking payments over the phone is one area that can be challenging to get right from a security perspective.  

For example, problems can occur when staff write down card details to process later or verbally check card details with the card holder by repeating them back when others in the office can overhear.  

PCI DSS v4.0 guidelines stipulate that the three or four digit code usually printed on the back of a card cannot be retained after the payment authorisation has been completed. In practice, this means that if your university or college records phone calls (for staff training purposes for example) then this would technically constitute a breach, even if it was unintentional.