Picture a university controller sitting at their desk, toggling between systems—one for tuition payments, another for housing deposits, a third for dining plans, and yet another for parking permits.
Receipts flow in from athletic ticket sales. Each transaction appears to work smoothly on its own.
But ask that controller a single question—”What does it really cost us to process payments?”—and the answer becomes surprisingly elusive.
This isn’t hypothetical. It’s the daily reality at most colleges and universities.
According to Transact + CBORD’s new report “Illuminating the Invisible,” just 17% of higher education institutions say they have full visibility into their payment-related costs. More than four out of five campuses are operating with significant blind spots in one of their most fundamental operational functions.
A picture of data disconnection
Only 22% of campus leaders feel confident in their ability to calculate total payment processing costs. Most rely on departmental systems, each with its own vendors and reconciliation methods.
Under that model, processing fees, chargebacks and reconciliation costs become difficult to track, and in some cases, are not tracked at all.
What’s more, “abandoned” payments—transactions students begin but never finish—are forcing many administrators to chase down records manually. Reconciliation tasks that could be automated are consuming valuable staff hours.
This fragmentation severely hinders reporting and planning. Schools with siloed payment data struggle to benchmark performance, negotiate vendor terms or calculate their true cost per transaction. When the central finance office can’t see the data, it can’t act on it.
Hidden tax of fragmentation
Campus payment systems often resemble a city built without a master plan. The bursar, dining, housing and athletics offices often all run their own infrastructures.
Each office can function on its own, yet rarely do they share a common payment backbone.
This creates a real financial impact. Without unified payment data, finance leaders can’t identify which systems generate unnecessary costs.
Staff spend hours reconciling mismatched records, which scrambles cash-flow visibility and increases the risk of reporting errors.
Students feel it, too. A single semester may require logging into four different portals to pay for tuition, housing deposits, parking passes and event tickets — each with different interfaces and confirmation processes. Confusion leads to missed deadlines that can jeopardize enrollment.
There is also a reputational cost. Administrators talk about digital transformation, yet in many cases, the systems that move money on campus are still held together by departmental workarounds and legacy contracts.
Millions of dollars pass through systems that no one fully owns or audits.
Visibility equals control
For students, financial visibility means clarity around what is owed, when it is due, and how to pay. That can be the difference between a smooth path to the next term and a registration hold.
For CFOs, visibility enables realistic forecasting, cleaner reporting and faster intervention when something looks off. With reliable payment data, finance teams can evaluate vendor performance with actual numbers instead of assumptions.
For CIOs, the issue is tied directly to system health. Disconnected payment tools create integration gaps and compliance exposure. They also build technical debt that gets more expensive every year.
Shining light on the blind spots
To improve, schools should approach payments as core infrastructure by:
- Consolidating systems without forcing uniformity: A unified payment platform can support tuition, dining, parking, commerce, athletics and student life. Departments keep the workflows they need, but all activity flows through a shared backbone.
- Using live operational data instead of backward-looking reports: Modern payment dashboards give finance teams real-time visibility into transaction success rates, chargebacks and anomalies. Instead of discovering reconciliation problems weeks later, administrators can intervene before they cascade across campus.
- Integrating payments into ERP and student systems: When payment data syncs automatically with ERP and student accounts, manual reconciliation drops. Students see accurate, current balances and staff spends less time troubleshooting. With transitions to cloud-based ERP systems on the rise, having a unified payment system with the latest certified integrations makes for a smoother adjustment.
Positioning payments as a core part of enrollment health, cash flow, audit readiness, and student satisfaction has a measurable financial impact. Centralized volume can improve processing rates in contract negotiations.
Fewer abandoned payments means smooth student progression, more completed transactions and faster collection.
Cost of staying in the dark
In higher education, it’s standard to track retention, alumni giving, research dollars, dining participation, and more. But the systems that move money in and out of institutional accounts remain some of the least examined.
Payment visibility now belongs in the same tier as cybersecurity posture and data governance. Institutions that build visibility into payment operations tend to move faster, allocate resources more intentionally, and protect margins in a tighter funding climate.
Every billing cycle that runs on guesswork carries a cost. Every term that goes by without a clear view of vendor fees and transaction behavior leaves money on the floor.
The data exists on campus already. Now, school leadership should pull it out of the dark and put it into action.
