Through the deals announced last month, students in China will be able to pay fees and other costs online to institutions abroad for little or no cost, avoiding the traditional route of a costly bank transfer.

Universities, which spend large sums on transactions every year, also stand to save considerably given around a third of all international students worldwide are Chinese.

The emerging trend could slash costs for Chinese students and universities worldwide

“More students go abroad from China than any other country in the world,” said Kerry Agiasotis, chief commercial officer at Western Union Business Solutions. “Over one million Chinese students studied abroad in 2011 and China is clearly an important market for universities globally.”

Both services will be delivered in partnership with Chinese firms. Western Union will work with China Pay, which claims to have hundreds of millions of users, and will launch the service next quarter. Through the deal Chinese students will be able to make payments to universities “around the world”, but the firm could not confirm regions involved or pricing.

However, the service is being actively promoted in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia – major study destinations where 15.7%, 22%, 25% and 29% of the student body respectively is Chinese, according to the most recent statistics available.

UK firm Uni Pay, which handles “thousands of transactions between international students and universities and English language colleges in the UK every year”, has teamed with AliPay which claims to have 700 million account holders. The service, which is UK focused (although it will work with UK offshore campuses as well), is free of charge to both students and universities and will go live in February 2013.

Jerry Sung, vice president of the International Business Department at Alipay, said: “We believe this collaboration will remove an entrance barrier to the Chinese market faced by such educational institutions, and this will mean that universities and language schools outside of China can offer a much improved service to Chinese students.”

A similar service from Peer Transfer was unveiled in October, which enables transfers to institutions in the US, Europe, Australia and Canada. The company says it could save Chinese students $100 million collectively each year.