Taking Payments Online
Switching on card and transfer payments: terms, your bank account, and who pays the charges.
What this decides
Until your school opts in, parents pay you at the school and nothing goes through the platform — you have agreed to nothing and are charged nothing. Opting in lets families pay by card or transfer from the parent portal, and the steps unlock in order: opt in, accept the terms, nominate the account the money lands in, wait for that account to be approved, then set who bears the transaction charges. Each step refuses to run before the one in front of it.
1. Opt in
Go to Finance → Payment service and press "Opt into online collections". This commits the school to nothing yet — it only opens the steps below. It needs the manage payment service permission, which the School Administrator holds by default and the Bursar deliberately does not: agreeing commercial terms is proprietor-level work.
2. Read and accept the terms
The page then shows exactly what the platform charges on each transaction: the "Percentage", any "Fixed component", what it is "Capped at", any "Minimum", the "Version" and the date it is "In force from". Read it, tick "I have read the charges above" to accept them on behalf of the school, and press "Accept terms". Your name and the exact version are recorded, so if the platform revises its pricing later it is plainly not the version you agreed to.
If there is nothing to accept
Where the page says terms are not available yet, the platform has not published pricing that applies to your school, so there is nothing to agree to and online collections cannot be switched on. Contact support. Nothing is owed in the meantime and no parent is affected — fees are still payable at the school.
3. Nominate the account the money lands in
Go to Finance → Settlement account and, under "Nominate an account", choose the "Bank" from "Select a bank…" and type the 10-digit "Account number". Press "Check with the bank": it answers with "The bank holds this account as" and the name the bank has on file, which is the bank's own answer and not something this form can choose. If that is not your school's account, correct the digits or the bank rather than looking for a way to edit the name. Then give the "School name, as it should appear to the payment provider" — this is what a parent sees against the payment — and press "Register this account".
4. Wait for it to be approved — this is the step with a wait in it
Registering is not the same as being able to receive money. The page says "Registered, and not yet able to receive money." and the status reads "Awaiting approval" until somebody at the platform has checked the account and recorded that they did. Until then online payments are refused, so do this early rather than in the week fees fall due. Once it is done the status reads "Approved" and the page says payments can be collected into the account.
If it is refused, or the account changes
A refusal shows as "Not approved" with the reason recorded — that reason is the part you can act on, usually a detail to correct before registering again. To move to a different account, press "Use a different account", answer "Why is this account being taken out of use?" and press "Take out of use", then nominate the new one. The replacement waits to be approved exactly as the first did: re-registering is never a way to get an account approved that nobody checked.
5. Decide who bears the transaction charges
On the Payment service page, set "School share (%)" and "Parent share (%)" — they must total exactly 100. 100/0 means the school absorbs the charges and the parent pays the fee as billed; 0/100 means the charge is added to what the parent pays, and it is disclosed to them before they pay. Choose the "Provider" that will process the money, then press "Save split". A provider that cannot produce statements is shown but cannot be chosen, because payments through it could never be checked against your records.
6. See what a payment will actually cost
Under "What would a payment cost?", type a "Transaction amount (₦)" and press "Preview charge". It runs the same arithmetic a real payment runs without moving any money, and shows "Parent actually pays" and "School actually receives" — the two figures a proprietor actually wants. Check a typical term's fee here before you tell parents what to expect.
Knowing you are switched on
The card at the top of the page says it plainly: "Can take payments now" reads Yes or No, alongside "Terms accepted", "Charge split" and the provider. While anything is outstanding the status reads "Awaiting terms acceptance" or "Awaiting charge configuration" instead of "Active", so you can always see which step is holding things up.
Pausing, and starting again
"Deactivate online collections" stops new online payments at once; payments already in progress are unaffected, and your terms and charge split are kept because they explain every transaction already taken. "Reactivate online collections" picks up where you left off — terms already accepted stay accepted, and you do not agree to anything a second time.