Flutterwave has announced its latest payment solution, Tuition! The new payment method makes it really easy for students to pay their international fees online using their local cards or any preferred payment option.
With Tuition, African users now have the convenience of paying various fees to educational institutions, both within Africa and overseas, using their local currencies. Positioning itself as the operating system for school fee payments, Flutterwave emphasises that Tuition is designed to cater to the needs of African students in universities, secondary/high schools, and professional bodies.
The Opportunity
Flutterwave recognised a valuable opportunity that led the payment company to initiate the project. The opportunity was discovered during an investigation conducted by Punch in 2021, amidst a period of Dollar Scarcity.
The scarcity of dollars in Nigeria made it difficult for parents and guardians to pay their children’s school fees abroad. This was due to the country’s economy, which heavily relies on foreign exchange and was greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the drop in oil prices.
Although the Central Bank of Nigeria were allocating foreign exchange to banks for school fee payments since August 2020, the situation deteriorated as time progressed. Parents, therefore, faced difficulties in accessing foreign currency from banks in a timely manner, resulting in significant delays in settling tuition fees.
The reports indicated that some parents experienced waiting periods of up to one month, while certain banks have been delaying customers for as long as six weeks to two months. Banks attributed these delays to insufficient forex allocation from the Central Bank.
As a result, parents began exploring different options to fulfill their school fee obligations, such as seeking help from high-ranking officials, waiting in long lines at banks, or even resorting to the black market or cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
The Solution Emerged: Tuition by Flutterwave Simplifies School Fee Payments
Tuition aims to solve the challenge of paying school fees for students studying abroad or at home by offering seamless transactions through their newly launched service.
With Tuition, you can easily pay school fees to over 40 institutions in the UK. Flutterwave also plans to expand the service to include more institutions in different countries across Africa and beyond.
The announcement has garnered positive reactions on Twitter, with users expressing their excitement. In response to a tweet by @tuitionbyflw, Taiwo Peter wrote, “Traditional banks can now rest easy.”
The product is currently available in Nigeria for UK school fee payments and will soon be rolled out to other African countries in the coming months. Flutterwave also plans to add more schools in Africa, the UK, US, Canada, France and Germany as it grows access to the product.
