Three concerns regarding international wire transfers

A difficult education payment process can affect not only the student experience but also a student’s ability to stay enrolled at an institution. This is why creating a frictionless payment process is worth the effort, as it saves you and your students time, money, and frustration. By building a seamless, secure process that is easy to navigate and considers payer needs, you promote trust and alignment between your institution and the students you serve.

While an international wire transfer or Telegraphic Transfer (TT) is often one of the more conventional ways to receive international payments, the following should be taken into consideration when your students and families are exploring and selecting payment options:

1. Security Concerns

When wire information is released, it’s often difficult to control where it goes and how it may be used. By displaying sensitive wire information on your website or invoice, you increase the risk of your bank account getting hacked. Sharing wire details over the phone or in email with payers is also not a recommended practice.

2. Cost Concerns

In addition to security concerns, wire transfers can prove costly. Payers are often charged wire fees, which may be sizable and discourage them from making the payment. Institutions could also receive short amounts as a result of additional bank charges.

3. Time Concerns

Furthermore, wire transfers can take time, especially when account details are entered incorrectly and the money gets wired somewhere other than your bank. When this happens, the wire transfer may be difficult to trace. Reconciliation might also be an issue as wire information might be truncated, lost, or not provided in the first place.

This is why an optimal payment experience should be full of convenient, secure options that your students are familiar using. You can ease the payment experience for your students by not only offering a variety of payment methods but also partnering with a payment provider who takes security seriously.

The world’s leading global payment network.

Flywire has been solving complex payment problems for students and education institutions since 2011. Today, we continue to remove boundaries by connecting millions of students with thousands of institutions to improve the payment experience worldwide. Backed by our powerful global payment network, our solution delivers on life's most important moments by enabling institutions to seamlessly and securely receive and reconcile payments from anyone, anywhere in the world–at any time.

With convenient, localized payment options and support for more than 140 currencies across 240 countries and territories, payers around the globe can select the payment method that best suits their needs. And, by providing options beyond international wire transfers, our clients are able to increase time and cost savings while reducing the risk of fraud by eliminating the need to disclose wire information.

Real Clients, Real Results

“At Cornell University, we have saved over $68,000 in incoming wire fees, over the last year by using Flywire.”
- Ed Baker, Assistant Bursar at Cornell University
“We actually had a breach a few years ago where someone pulled our info off our website and hacked our bank account. Now it’s an NC State policy that we can’t publish it and our staff knows not to give it out. We tell the students we don’t have bank information and we don’t accept wire payments from international students any other way than Flywire. We stay strong, push back and tell them it’s the only option and it works! We get our payments from our [international] students all the time.”
- Maria Brown, Director Cashier’s Office at North Carolina State University

How to get started?

It’s easy to direct students and families to pay your institution safely and securely through Flywire:

Check out the following resources to discover why millions of students and thousands of institutions worldwide rely on Flywire to securely process online payments:

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