International education is one of the fastest-growing corridors in global cross-border payments, yet the way universities collect tuition from students abroad has changed little in decades. As a new generation of digital-first platforms disrupts this space, a leading global payments network engaged KoreFusion to understand how the ecosystem is evolving, and where new products and partnerships could add value for universities, students, and their families.

The Challenge

For generations, universities have collected international tuition payments primarily through incoming cross-border wire transfers, a channel long associated with delays, heavy manual-reconciliation burden, and limited payment transparency. As international student enrollment has grown, so have the operational and risk challenges facing universities: labor-intensive reconciliation processes, rising compliance and customer-support demands, and growing exposure to payment fraud. Refunds and payouts compound the problem, particularly as a meaningful share of admitted students enroll elsewhere after paying initial fees. The payments network needed a clear, research-based view of how this landscape was evolving, including the rise of specialized education payment platforms, and where card-based and money-movement solutions could meaningfully address these pain points.

The Approach

KoreFusion conducted an extensive primary research program, completing more than 60 interviews with industry stakeholders and end-users across eight markets spanning Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America. The research engaged universities, financial institutions, and specialized cross-border education payment platforms, as well as international students and their families, to map the end-to-end payment lifecycle, from application and enrollment fees through tuition installments, refunds, and payouts. KoreFusion benchmarked the emerging category of dedicated education payment platforms against traditional banking channels, examined how payment preferences and pain points vary by origin and destination market, and assessed the regulatory nuances and behavioral dynamics shaping how families choose to pay.

The Outcome

The research delivered a comprehensive, ground-truth view of the cross-border tuition payments ecosystem and the forces reshaping it, including the rapid rise of specialized education payment platforms and their growing advantage over legacy banking channels. It identified concrete opportunities for the network's card and money-movement products to address longstanding university and student pain points, particularly around high-value transactions, refunds and payouts, and secure early-stage payments. The findings gave the network's commercial and product teams a research-backed foundation for engaging partners and shaping strategy in one of the fastest-growing segments of global cross-border payments.