The landscape of international payments is evolving rapidly. The payer journey is more important than ever, as consumers increasingly expect no difference between the ease, speed and cost of an international payment compared with day-to-day domestic payments. Our recent education webinar focused on comprehensive product-led research conducted with students worldwide who raised an inquiry with Convera when making their payment with us, to better understand their experience.
Below you can watch the full webinar for your region, hosted by Nicola Bennett, Director – Product Management at Convera, and Erin Pendleton, Senior Product Manager at Convera.
Comprehensive assessment of the full payer journey
Erin Pendleton explained that the research aimed to understand factors prompting student inquiries and dive into their experiences with Convera’s GlobalPay for Students platform (GPFS).
The entire payer journey was assessed in-depth, including specific features, including:
- Receipt pages for wire transfers.
- Payment tracking.
- FAQ and webform for inquiries.
Test prototypes and screens were also shared to gain feedback and inform Convera’s future roadmap, with a focus on user experience and design.
Participants were selected based on an inquiry they had made in the past three months pertaining to either their payment status, refund status or payment instructions. This segmentation ensured the research reflected the largest outbound student markets and focused on the types of inquiries raised most often.
The approach included one-hour guided Q&A sessions with students from nine different countries, including India, China, Norway, Pakistan, USA, Canada, Philippines, Peru, Nigeria. Design reviews of existing and new pages in the payer journey were also conducted.
The results? Transparency, support and discoverability
Nicola Bennett shared three key themes that emerged from the research, and pinpointed areas for improvement:
Payment clarity and transparency: Many students struggled with payment jargon, which highlighted the need for clearer payment instructions and more detailed resources to help students, their families and agents make payments confidently. Feedback on these points has been incorporated into the 2024 roadmap.
Real-time support: Bennett also explains that there was a strong preference for live agent chat as the ideal support interaction, with over 90% of participants describing real-time resolution as beneficial.
Improved discoverability: Feedback from students has directly influenced a revamp of the student FAQ design to improve navigational search for specific answers. The research also supported the idea of student accounts at checkout, simplifying the view of payment statuses and historical records.
2024 roadmap: Removing friction from the payment experience
The scale, depth, and diversity of questions in the research set a new benchmark for Convera’s approach to product development, where continually challenging assumptions on how users navigate the international payment process helps ensures our teams are working towards frictionless payment experiences for students.
Learnings from this research have already found their way into Convera’s 2024 product roadmap.
- Our payment instructions are being redesigned to provide students with the information they need to complete a payment with confidence.
- With 90% of participants showing a strong preference for real-time resolution of inquiries, we have made live agent chat a key focus on the 2024 roadmap.
- Our FAQs are being revamped to help guide students through the payment journey.
- We are working towards implementing account setup at checkout.
The roadmap also includes a range of upcoming product developments such as a new currency payout option for US Loans, payment and refund tracking enhancements, a GPFS landing page refresh, payment limit increases for Indian students, and an American Express payment option.
The future of international student payments
Our next webinar will focus on a new embedded payment solution, showcasing the results of an ongoing pilot in Australia. This in-depth overview will explore how this innovation allows institutions to integrate GPFS directly into their websites with minimal IT resources, to deliver a unified payment experience without redirecting students to an external website to complete their payment with less friction.
Convera has plenty more developments in store for 2024, promising to further streamline the international payment process for students worldwide. We look forward to continuing this journey with you and enhancing the global student payment experience.
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