Fees friction is testing Asia’s academic ambitions

It is not just about how students pay their fees, but how schools support their students.

Asia Pacific is on its way to becoming the world’s biggest classroom, as student mobility surges within the region. 

Driven by tighter visa policies and policy disruptions in the West, thousands of students are looking Eastward in search of new educational opportunities. Student interest in Asian destinations like Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea rose by 19% from March to June 2025, with Hong Kong growing 125% quarter-on-quarter. 

Against this backdrop, the region’s higher education market is projected to grow 13.2% annually to $28.3b by 2033.

Asia Pacific’s ability to meet this surge is not just about academic scalability, but financial transformation. With rising student numbers, schools need to look at existing education resources like teaching staff, expanding classroom capacities or adapting curricula, even as they manage a higher volume of school fee collections and scholarship disbursements across a wider geography. 

Each of these touchpoints depends on financial transactions, meaning the pace and quality of learning ultimately hinges on how efficiently an institution manages its payment systems. 

To sustain the region’s growing reputation as a global education hub, we must rethink the student experience beyond the classroom and make the movement of money as frictionless, transparent, and inclusive as the learning itself.

Outdated payments: A source of stress
Institutions that rely on SWIFT transfers often have to deal with complex, slow, and late settlements, creating uncertainty over whether large transactions like school fees are completed on time. Hidden foreign exchange and banking transfer fees from outdated systems could also drain students of valuable funds. 

For example, Indian families have collectively lost an estimated $200m in hidden charges for school-related transactions in 2024. Such setbacks can cause anxiety and even derail academic plans if a student’s enrollment or immigration status is compromised by a slow or missing payment.

It is not just about how students pay their fees, but how schools support their students. Outdated payment systems can also lead to late disbursements of scholarship funds or research grants. 

Late or unpredictable tuition payments make it harder for schools to forecast budgets and manage cash flow for essentials like faculty salaries and enrichment programmes. This could disrupt research timelines, affect the quality of research output, and limit access to resources, eroding valuable trust in the institution and its mission.

Over time, financial distractions may draw the focus away from innovation and learning. Students are debating bank customer service agents instead of peers in the classroom. 

Stress and distrust build up tension between schools and students, causing existing and prospective students to lose confidence in the institution's ability to nurture their growth. 

A lesson in adaptation: Next-gen payments
A next-generation payment system should deliver two key outcomes to student users: financial control and peace of mind.

Students should be able to control their cross-border financial transactions through transparent payment systems that offer multi-currency options and clear visibility of FX and banking fees, and have the peace of mind that their money movements are settled with speed, easily tracked, and transacted securely across different territories.

Delivering on these outcomes is reassuring for students and faculty, who often manage big-ticket transactions such as international tuition payments or research procurements. 

To enable a smooth and seamless transaction experience, institutions should consider modern cross-border payment solutions that support fast, transparent, and secure transfers across multiple endpoints like bank accounts and cards in most major education corridors globally, including Asia.

Modern payments will also help schools to manage complex financial processes and strengthen how schools support their students.

In today’s payment ecosystem, there are payment solutions that enable instant stipend and scholarship disbursement to digital wallets or prepaid cards, which mirror consumer-like speed and experience in education payment. Virtual cards for faculty and research spending could also be embedded in enterprise resource portals, which allow secure, trackable faculty travel and procurement, cutting down reconciliation time and risk. 

Just recently, in October 2025, Chattogram University in Bangladesh inaugurated a fully cashless university campus under Bangladesh Bank’s ‘Cashless Bangladesh’ initiative. The rollout enabled students to make real-time, secure transactions for tuition fees and everyday spending through QR-based payments and campus-issued cards, reducing reliance on cash and easing administrative burdens for the university.

The Grade A transformation 
Scaling an educational institution goes beyond just expanding campuses and curricula. It is about a holistic transformation of the education infrastructure, from courses right down to how well students can access them. A seamless payment infrastructure goes a long way towards reducing costs, accelerating access, and providing clarity, helping students to focus on what really matters: learning.

Without modern payments, institutions risk falling behind their competitors in this surge of student mobility. The lesson for institutions is clear - payments must be a key part of the transformation curriculum, and not just an optional chapter.