The challenge
An uneven student payment experience
London School of Economics (LSE) is a specialist social sciences university with more than 11,500 students and postgraduate researchers. LSE is committed to building a vibrant, equitable and truly inclusive environment for staff and students from all over the world, and in 2023 it was ranked the top university in London by the Complete University Guide, for the 11th year running.
LSE has an extensive relationship with the Convera team, which began with the implementation of wire services offered through the university’s payment portal for international students. In addition to wire payments, the portal formerly offered card payments through a different provider.
Glenn Ruane, Head of Fees, Income and Credit Control at the London School of Economics and Political Science, explains, “Prior to adopting a single payment solution with Convera, students using our payment portal could not easily see which payment option was most suitable for their needs. For example, they might choose the card option to pay their accommodation fees, and halfway through the process realise that only Visa cards were accepted by our previous card provider. The payer would then have to re-start the payment process to reselect an alternative payment option such as a wire payment. Overall, the user experience wasn’t as smooth as we wanted it to be.”
When the university began to see a natural increase in the number of students using wire payments, the decision was made to reassess student payment acceptance across the board and consider how both the payer experience and back-office processes could be streamlined.
“We concluded that by reducing the number of payment providers we worked with, we could create a smoother experience for students, and also streamline our internal processes,” said Glenn.
The solution
Feeling secure with Convera
LSE approached a range of payment providers as part of its payment acceptance review, and ultimately chose to work with Convera as its sole provider.
“Like every university, security is paramount to us, and this has been a big factor in our decision to work with Convera as a single provider. LSE uses a custom-designed payment portal which was developed and deployed in our Salesforce environment, which is unusual for institutions, and Convera enabled us to securely communicate data from our payments portal, through Convera’s platforms and back into our finance system. We are confident that the Convera platform is robust and secure,” said Glenn.
LSE implemented Convera’s GlobalPay for Students platform, which offers a wide range of payment options, transparent pricing, and comparison tools.
“The implementation was straightforward, and the Convera team were available to answer questions and offer support every step of the way. Students, family payers and sponsors can now easily choose from multiple payment options including bank transfers, online payments, and credit and debit cards. Best of all they can see from the outset how much a payment will cost in their local currency and determine which option suits them best.”
The results
Streamlining multiple payment processes
LSE’s annual student surveys show very positive feedback about the payment options offered through GlobalPay for Students, which has encouraged LSE to expand its partnership with Convera.
“Working with Convera has helped improve the payment journey for both domestic and international students. The platform is intuitive and offers a wide variety of payment options, which has greatly improved the payer experience. The platform also benefits us internally by integrating with our finance systems to increase the efficiency of our reconciliation processes, we have also seen a dramatic cost reduction in merchant fees. And, anecdotally we have not had any instances of fraud since the implementation.
“The success of the Global Pay for Students encouraged us to leverage Convera’s expertise and streamline other aspects of our international payment requirements,” Glenn elaborated.
“Convera offers a secure platform for collecting student bank details for refunds or payments, this has assisted the LSE with sending funds back to students in a controlled and compliant way.”
Convera’s co-branded refunds portal is an easy way to make efficient transactions back to the source payment, or quickly and easily collect bank information from a student. It empowers LSE to save time by uploading up to 500 refunds to process in one file, while students get full visibility of refund status from initiation to payment.
LSE has also worked with Convera to implement a family payment portal that allows family payers to make a payment on behalf of the student. LSE has also designed and deployed a sponsor portal that allows sponsors to pay a student’s tuition and fees on their behalf. LSE is one of the first EU-based universities to launch such portals.
“We have also begun to leverage Convera’s expertise to assist when students receive military funding or US loans disbursements. The movement of loan funds is heavily regulated, and Convera helps us remain compliant with these requirements by enabling us to securely collect student bank details and disburse these funds.
“Convera has become our preferred payments provider because of the increased efficiencies and cost savings they’ve helped us achieve, and we continue working on new projects. For example, LSE will soon be using Convera to process commercial payments such as research contracts. As it stands today, Convera will be processing the vast majority of our incoming payments, and we see lots of benefits in that,” Glenn concluded.
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