No Credit Cards: Proposed tuition payment changes may come into effect as early as fall
The Kwantlen Board of Governors approved draft budget amendments this spring which may entail restrictions on the use of credit cards for tuition payments.
By Chris Yee [Student Affairs Bureau Chief]
The Kwantlen Board of Governors approved draft budget amendments this spring which may entail restrictions on the use of credit cards for tuition payments.
Under these restrictions, domestic students may only pay their tuition with Interac debit cards, cheques or cash.
According to an email sent to the Runner by KSA Director of Academic Affairs Brad Head, the online payment system has been changed to accept payments using Interac. Head also said the use of credit cards for tuition payments may potentially be phased out by the fall semester.
Last year, Kwantlen paid between $400,000 and $500,000 on credit card fees, according Head.
The savings from discontinuing domestic tuition credit card payments (and the associated interest fees on the transactions) are expected to be $250,000 for the 2010-2011 year, according to the April President’s Newsletter.
The University plans to use the savings to help fund a $450,000 increase to student scholarships and bursaries.
Head said that credit card tuition payments by international students would likely continue because it would be difficult for some international students to pay their tuition in cash, in light of visa restrictions.
In response to the impending restrictions on tuition payments by credit card, Head said, the KSA adopted an “Access to Educational Payment” policy.
The policy, according to a report by the KSA’s Academic Issues Committee (AIC), expressed the KSA’s support of “the use of multiple systems of payments including credit cards and the improved accessibility for students to use alternative payment procedures for tuition and other campus services,” and urged “credit card companies to remove transaction fees for credit card usage at post secondary [sic] institutions, or provide those fees in the form of bursaries… and scholarship donations.”
The KSA’s AIC had also investigated the use of credit card tuition payment services such as pay4unow.com; however, Head considers this a less than ideal option, saying that it would “not [be] fair to charge students on top of their other fees”. Pay4unow.com charges a handling fee of $16 for every $500 paid using the service.
