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Simon Read, Director, Uni-Pay

SR: We charge a transaction fee to the students, which is as low as £7, but we pass on the benefits of avoiding the exchange rate fees to the students too. The Singaporean student would probably have to pay three times as much if he didn’t use us. The university transaction fees for incoming payments also disappear.

 The PIE: You’ve also teamed up with Centurus on an online application service. What does it offer?

SR: That is focused on HE at the moment. Centurus is a small organisation, run by an ex-student from the University of Central Lancashire, Dawood Fard. He saw that there was no uniform way of students or agents to submit applications for individuals who need Tier 4 Visas —the basic steps are the same for everyone, but in terms of how an institution or agent goes about it and manages the communication around financial documentation and keeping records is entirely up to them. This causes issues when an institution is dealing with 20-30 agents and becomes messy and hard to manage.

“Some universities have systems to handle the application process but they tend to be inefficient”

This lack of structure also gives scope for loopholes and potential visa fraud. We met Dawood and decided there was crossover, given the importance of payments in the university application process and ensuring a student’s visa requirements are met. Dawood’s idea was great but he needed support in how to take it to market, so we have entered into a partnership and have taken Centurus into our portfolio of products. Needless to say the Uni-Pay payment process has also been fully integrated into the Centurus system.

 The PIE: It seems a good idea given the tougher compliance expectations placed on universities by the government.

SR: Yes. You had more than 300,000 overseas students studying here last year and it does continue to grow. Most universities also have strategies to increase internationalisation and want more students and competition is high.  Universities have a lot of management systems in place that focus on day to day issues after the student is enrolled and on campus; some also have systems to handle the application process but they tend to be inefficient.

The time taken to process an overseas student from application to offer can take far too long. Some bits of the process are too convoluted. So our system helps to improve the application process and reduces burden. We also provide universities far more data than was available previously, so they can really monitor their international admissions performance – and the performance of the agents that they use.

“In the payment space, Uni-Pay has seen business double year on year since it launched, so there definitely is growth”

The PIE: How does it prevent fraud?

SR: The system is really designed to manage communication between students, agents and institutions. Users internally who are dealing with many agents on a daily basis can share data on agents and flag bad experiences they’ve had for others to see. They can also restrict agents to applications from certain countries only.

 The PIE: So do you think demand for such admissions systems is going to grow?

SR: In the payment space, Uni-Pay has seen business double year on year since it launched, so there definitely is growth. Clearly there are more providers in the market but at the same time it is a growth market globally. We estimate international students coming to the UK are costing universities alone £34 million in banking and credit card charges. For language schools and colleges the figure will also be in the tens of millions.

With Centurus I think there aren’t any other products like it at the moment. So while it’s quite new, we see a lot of opportunity for growth, as universities look to see their conversion rate increase by improving efficiency.

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