Top Methods To Pay Your Child’s Overseas Tuition Fees

 Top Methods To Pay Your Child’s Overseas Tuition Fees

If you’re the mother of a child who is going to be studying abroad, and if you’re the one who will be paying tuition, you need to know that sending the tuition fees to an international university will not be the same as sending it to one in the United States.

Making an international payment always has more steps involved because of the higher fees and the fact that currency has to be exchanged from one form to another.

Fortunately, there are a variety of methods available before you to pay your child’s tuition, and each have their ups and downs.

Here are the top methods to pay your child’s overseas tuition fees:

Wire The Fees To The University

With this method, you’ll simply walk into your bank (or go to their website) and submit a wire transfer to your child’s university. Wire transfers are a very common method for making international payments in general, so it’s a very safe route to go.

The main problem with it, unfortunately, is the expense. Your bank will charge you a large up-front fee that may be as low as $40 or as high as $80, in addition to a margin of the exchange rate. This means that if you’re going to be sending several thousand dollars to pay for your child’s tuition, you can expect to pay several hundred extra at the minimum.

Remittance Service

The next option will be to send the funds using an online remittance service. This should be a faster and cheaper method in comparison to doing a wire transfer, though you will need to confirm that your child’s university will actually accept the transfer.

Remittance services should process and send the funds within one to two days, and you’ll only pay a small percentage fee versus the flat fee of a bank.

Online Payment

There’s always a chance that your child’s university will have an online payment option available with the ability to transfer the funds over. You’ll just need to confirm that the college will convert your American dollars into their currency. If so, you’ll likely have to pay a fee as you would with a bank or remittance service.

Money Orders

A more traditional method would be to simply submit a money order. With this amount, you’ll pay an amount of money to be sent to the bank account of your child’s university. This can be completed either online or in-person at a bank or post office.

The main advantage to the money order method is it guarantees the funds will be sent because you prepaid them, but the disadvantage is it will take several days for the funds to be sent. Needless to say, there are faster options out there.

Paying Your Child’s Overseas Tuition Fees

Regardless of whichever of these payment methods you choose to go with for paying your child’s overseas tuition, what is most important is that you make the payment on time in order to avoid paying late fees.