Tilburg University automates payment requests
Tilburg University is a well-run, medium-sized, and multidisciplinary university specializing in human and social sciences. In 2022, Tilburg University offered 24 bachelor's and 49 master's programs, to more than 20,000 students. Of these students, 4231 came from abroad with 112 different nationalities. Revenue from various sources equaled more than 291 million euros, part of which is collected using Serrala payment requests.
Business Need
Of great importance to the university and its students is the timely and error-free payment of lecture fees and other charges. This is because the Finance team relies on such payments for cash flow and liquidity. Apart from this, the Finance team also wants to minimize the effort and cost spent in chasing students, or their parents, for unpaid items. For the students themselves, forgetting a payment or making a mistake could jeopardize their enrolment or participation.
Traditional methods of asking for a payment are slow and expensive paper invoices and reminders, or their digital equivalent: an e-mail with a pdf attachment of an invoice with the details of the payment that the recipient must then type in. An IBAN number, a reference, an amount, and the name of the university. Typing these details into a banking app is a chore that students tend to put off and then forget. When they do pay, they may make mistakes that interfere with automated matching, resulting in manual administrative effort, and possibly operational problems.
For international students, especially those coming from outside the EU, making such a bank transfer can be even more cumbersome. To address these challenges and simplify the lives of both students and finance staff, the university decided to look for a solution that enabled online payments directly from external communication channels. A key requirement of the university was that this could easily communicate with the existing ERP system SAP, thus avoiding a major IT project.
Solution
In Serrala, the university found a thinking and reliable supplier with a proven solution for payment requests.
Payment requests are unique payment links delivered via personalized messages, allowing recipients to easily authorize an online payment, as they do in an online shop. By eliminating the need to set up a bank transfer all over again, payment requests lower the threshold for timely payment. Moreover, they exclude errors in, for example, the amount or reference number and thus ensure seamless matching. The sender can also track payment requests to see - and if necessary, respond to - whether they have been received and paid. Once successfully authorized, the payment status on the payment page clearly changes to Paid. If the request remains unpaid until the due date is reached, the request expires.
The first implementation focused on sending reminders to students as well as payment requests for visa fees. By reaching them via e-mail, the university gave students the option to pay using iDEAL, the dominant interbank online payment method in the Netherlands. Because students are students, they can also forward e-mail to their parents or another sponsor. Once someone has paid, each request immediately changes the status to Paid, ensuring clarity, and preventing duplicate payments.
Taking care of emails is an integral part of the solution. Serrala provides the required email templates in terms of branding, design, language, security, renderability and deliverability: the key to high conversion is that emails are trusted by both email providers like Gmail and Outlook (to avoid the so-called "Junk" folder), and by people who see them in their inbox. Emails should look good on any device and clearly indicate what action the recipient should take.
- Easy collection of tuition fees and other payments is crucial for universities.
- Credit card payments are important for overseas students.
- Payment requests via email and SMS facilitate instant online payment.
- Serrala makes those easy to deploy, use, and benefit from.
Results
Automation and flexibility
Tilburg University deployed the solution in two ways:
- Sending data files for reminders on college money from an edited download from Osiris to Serrala's cloud-based service, via a secure file exchange for automatically creating and sending payment requests. This limits the college's system integration efforts to simply producing export files with the correct information, like sending the same files to a printer.
- As a standalone web application for users in specific departments to manually create and send payment requests. This requires no integration and offers flexibility to determine the right amount for individual situations in real time, for example.
Through regular communication with Serrala, the university continues to look for ways to improve and expand the use of the solution.
Expanding scope and countries
The software runs on Microsoft Azure and is supported by ISO27001-certified operations. Once the software is up and running, universities often look for new ways to exploit this new software in other ways and places. So does Tilburg University:
- Payment methods. Especially for international students, offering global or other local payment methods can be of great value. Credit cards, PayPal and Apple Pay are popular around the world. In addition, large groups from specific countries can be helped with specific local payment methods (e.g., Bancontact for Belgium, Sofort Uberweisung for Germany).
- Use cases. Having previously focused only on tuition fees, universities usually find other things that students (or others, such as academics) must pay fees for events, deposits, visa applications, college materials, accommodation, etc.
- Channels. Everyone has, and uses, e-mail. Yet sometimes emails don't arrive. The e-mail address is incorrect or outdated, or the inbox is full. Serrala's software can track this and send the same payment link via text message to the student's mobile phone, or by post to the student's address. Using the API, the solution can even be integrated into a university's student portal to provide choice, consistency, and clarity across all channels.
- Features. For example, by using automatic 'preminders', which allow unpaid payment requests to be followed up a few days before their due date. In this way, a second chance at timely payment is offered.
Experiences and benefits
Tilburg University is one of many educational institutions using Serrala's payment requests. And, like most of these institutions, it saw reason to expand its use over time - a testament to the software's added value, versatility, and reliability.
The project went well. However, as often happens when implementing a digital solution, there is more involved than expected and the lead time was longer than estimated beforehand. The ease with which reminders can be sent after implementation is quick and being able to track the status is a big plus. The support from Serrala is good.
Another thing: Streamlining card payments
To accept credit card payments, organizations typically use the services of regular "collecting" Payment Service Providers (PSP). PSP collects card payments throughout the day, or week, and then makes one large bulk payment into the organization’s bank account, with any processing fees deducted. To understand that payment, the PSP provides a report also called a settlement file, often in a customized format. This causes the organization to have to download and parse that settlement file to reconcile and match payments, often a time-consuming and error-prone manual operation via Excel. At Tilburg University, this created a barrier to offering credit cards as a payment method.
Fortunately, Serrala can offer online payment methods, including credit card payments, to EU organizations as an integrated part of its software. Together with its partner PSP, Serrala has ensured that 1:1 individual payouts of each card payment are possible. If the payment request is for €176.25, with reference number #1234567 and the customer pays by credit card, the result is a bank transfer with the exact same amount and reference number directly to the organization’s bank account. This enables automatic matching with the corresponding open item. Each period, the organization receives a separate invoice for the fees owed to Serrala and the partner PSP.