Enhance international student experience with seamless, secure embedded payments tailored for education institutions.
Embedded finance has emerged as a transformative technology that’s reshaping how consumers interact with banks and other traditional financial institutions, by integrating financial services into their daily activities. This significant evolution in the fintech landscape builds upon concepts like open banking, open finance and banking-as-a-service (BaaS) by allowing non-financial organizations to embed financial services conveniently within their website or application.
The embedded finance market is growing rapidly, presenting significant opportunities for both consumers and businesses, driven by the convenience it offers consumers, companies, and other organizations.
For education institutions, embedded finance presents an exciting opportunity to support international students more effectively, by enabling financial transactions quickly and securely within the institution’s website. Convera is excited to launch its embedded payments solution for education institutions.
The immeasurable potential for embedded finance
The rise of embedded finance can be linked to a behavioral shift in modern consumers, many of whom are digital natives that expect a seamless and integrated approach to financial services. Evolving customer expectations are driving innovations in service delivery and the integration of financial products into non-financial platforms.
The goal of embedded finance is to meet these needs by providing financial services where and when consumers want them. This not only enhances customer experiences but also creates new revenue streams as businesses discover novel ways to add financial value to their services.
This shift is part of the broader embedded finance revolution, where non-financial companies partner with embedded finance providers to seamlessly integrate financial services into their offerings. This enables brands access financial products without needing to develop extensive expertise in finance and technology, streamlining the process of offering new financial solutions to consumers.
According to the Fintech 2025+ report produced by Convera, estimates suggest that the global opportunity for embedded finance will reach USD 7.2 trillion in the next decade, twice the combined value of the world’s top 30 banks today.
Real-world use case cases for embedded finance
Rideshare apps, such as Uber, demonstrate how quickly embedded finance and banking services have changed consumer expectations by integrating payment services directly into their platforms. Consumers have quickly become accustomed to easily sourcing, communicating with and paying for a taxi service within a single mobile app. Travel sites like Expedia are another great example, providing travel insurance and financing options to travelers directly on their sites.
For education institutions, embedded finance can simplify the cross-border payments process that international students must navigate to pay tuition and other fees, by delivering a frictionless payment experience where students complete a transaction without leaving the institution’s website.
The benefits of embedded finance for education institutions
The process for international students, their families, and agents to pay fees and other study expenses can be daunting. Users are often forced to navigate multiple platforms which leads to confusion and errors, and ultimately increases the number of abandoned payments.
Education institutions are acutely aware that a frictionless payment experience is closely related to maintaining a positive reputation among international students. In the rapidly evolving world of fintech, it’s critical that education institutions consistently evolve their payments processes to match the expectations of their student base. This must be an iterative exercise focused on continuously improving the payment experience with the goal of removing friction, adding speed and increasing convenience at every touchpoint.
By integrating embedded payments into their systems, education institutions can provide international students with a seamless financial experience when paying tuition fees, within the institution’s website. This integration can reduce administrative burdens, minimize transaction costs and enhance the experience of international students who are navigating complex financial landscapes in a foreign country.
Why your institution should embed GlobalPay for Students
Convera is transforming its payments platforms and capabilities for the future, to offer embedded finance and deliver frictionless payments for customers today. The Convera embedded payments solution enables partners and institutions to easily embed GlobalPay for Students (GPFS) into their own website, so students can complete a transaction without being redirected to an external website. Institutions can customize the look and feel of the solution to match their website, further increasing trust among students.
Key reasons to implement the Convera embedded payments solution include:
Increase student payment conversions
Boost payment conversions by fostering trust and confidence amongst international students and reducing the number of ‘clicks’ required to make a payment. The Convera embedded payment solution delivers all GPFS functionality with the education institution’s own website, including payment options and real time payment tracking.
Strengthen security and student trust
As financial cybercrime increases, embedded finance is an opportunity to help students feel more secure about their transaction by completing their payment within a website they know and trust. Secure handling of customer data is crucial in this context, ensuring that sensitive information is protected.
The embedded payment solution was built with security in mind. During onboarding, each merchant will be provided with a merchantID and merchantSecret that is unique to them. Additionally, Convera will map the merchant domain, which refers to the site where the embedded payment solution is situated. Each call must include valid merchant credentials and originate from a mapped domain, otherwise buyers will not be able to complete payment. Payments are protected by Convera’s security protocols, and the solution can be embedded behind a student login.
Payment options and user journey features stay the same
Continue providing students with flexible payment options. The embedded payments solution delivers all the existing payment types offered via GPFS including credit and debit cards, eWallets, Pay by Bank (or online payment options such as Klarna or Trustly) and international wire transfer. Likewise, education institutions will still have access to other tools hosted on GPFS such as payment and refund tracking, and access to Convera’s support team and FAQs.
Minimize re-entry errors
Pre-populate and lock fields including student information and payment amount, to minimize re-entry errors. This ensures data accuracy, minimizes double-entry of information, and helps simplify payment and financial account reconciliation.
Maintain student support device options
Embedding financial services allows students to pay from any device via a fully responsive user interface, and all payments are supported by Convera’s student help tools (virtual assistant and FAQs) and support teams.
Fast, simple integration
Setting up a financial infrastructure and navigating regulatory requirements can be complex and time consuming. Embedded finance streamlines these challenges by allowing organizations to integrate financial services into their products, without taking on the full burden of compliance management.
Convera offers various GPFS integration options. This includes the hosted URL option which redirects students for payment; the embedded option which stays within your website and environment; and lastly the API option where you take full control of the user experience.
To compare these integration options side by side, the hosted option requires the least integration effort, while the API option provides full control of the user experience but requires the most integration effort. The Convera embedded payments option sits in the sweet spot where institutions can customize the user experience and deliver all GPFS payment options, by easily integrating with an institution’s website via one line of code. No heavy technology resources or complex configuration required.
In fact, implementing the embedded payment solution can be summarized in four steps:
- Import our software development kit JavaScript.
- Initiate your script with the provided merchantID and merchantSecrete which are unique to each institution’s account.
- Pass through payment, service and payer data within the payload. Our implementation consultant will guide your development team with a sample payload aligned to our data mapping specifications.
- Lastly, institutions can style the embedded payments solution with their own branding
Seamless payments, happy students
Frictionless payment experiences, including embedded financial services, are closely linked to positive student experiences overall. International students appreciate seamless processes when completing payments in many other areas of their day-to-day lives, so why shouldn’t they have the same frictionless experience when paying their tuition and other student fees? By rethinking their business models education institutions can streamline processes and improve efficiency for international students.
Embedded payment solutions from financial service providers like Convera offer seamless integration to enable quick, secure and frictionless cross border payments within an institution’s website. Innovative education institutions will jump at this opportunity to boost payment conversions, minimize errors and streamline financial processes.
Want more insights on the topics shaping the future of cross-border payments? Tune in to Converge, with new episodes every Wednesday.
Plus, register for the Daily Market Update to get the latest currency news and FX analysis from our experts directly to your inbox.
