Securing student payments at Dundee College

In April 2007, Dundee College moved to Capita’s Payment Management solution. Their new provision supported integrated payments by credit and debit cards in both ‘customer present’ and ‘over the telephone’ environments, along with ‘over the counter’ payments with cash and cheque – options that have all delivered tangible efficiency savings.

The background

One of Scotland’s largest colleges, Dundee College has around 23,000 students enrolled and an annual turnover of £28 million. The College continually develops its service offering to remain a major contributor to the local economy and community.

The challenge

Formerly Dundee College accepted card payments but only through stand-alone bank owned terminals, which often led to delays when taking payments.

The solution

Implementing Capita’s Payment Management solutions allows payments at Dundee College to use Capita’s Paye.net application, incorporating Capita’s Managed APACS solution.

Paye.net from Capita is a browser-based solution that supports payments by credit and debit card in both ‘customer present’ and ‘card not present’ settings, as well as ‘over the counter’ payments by cash and cheque. This uses Capita’s pre-accredited “Managed APACS” service.

Liana Bartholomew, Finance Team Leader at Dundee College, took a lead role in selecting Capita. She stated, “From the outset, we saw real benefits in terms of speed of processing card payments, having removed the requirement to keep the cardholder waiting while we accessed the stand-alone bank terminal…We were particularly impressed by Capita’s quality of project management, implementation and training.”

The benefits Capita’s solution is faster, slicker and more user-friendly than the former method and enables card payments to be handled as a single process. Payments are primarily made for students’ course fees, although they are accepted for other purposes such as business courses and accommodation charges. Students can choose to pay in person by card, cheque or cash and in many cases, card details are provided over the telephone or on application forms, therefore to remain secure; payments are processed by an authorised member of staff. In the last twelve months, the College has received over 4,000 card payments with a total value of around £320,000, with an average payment value of around £79. Read the Dundee College case study in full

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