Students and parents to receive and pay tuition online

The University of Wisconsin–Madison bursar’s office is going digital this fall by sending tuition bills via e-mail for students and their parents to pay online.

The new eBilling and ePayment system allows students to authorize parents or other payers to receive tuition statements by e-mail and pay them online using their own login ID.

Payers will be able to see immediately when their payment has gone through and can view their real-time balance at any time.

First-semester bills are currently available for viewing, can be paid online with any U.S. checking or savings account and are due Sept. 18 for most students. The bursar’s office does not accept debit or credit cards.

In compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), students have full control over who does or does not receive the bill, and they will receive e-mail notices along with payers students have authorized when the tuition bill is ready to be viewed and paid.

Students can authorize as many payers as they choose via the Student Center at the My UW portal.

Authorized payers will not have access to any other information in the Student Center or My UW portal, including grades and class schedule.

“It provides security since the student is the one to authorize who gets to see their tuition account information,” says Bursar Cathie Easter. “Ultimately, it’s the student with whom we have the relationship.”

She adds that snail-mail billing can be problematic at times when students forget to update their school or home addresses, and thousands of bills are returned to the bursar’s office because the addresses are no longer valid.

Also, if students have different family members paying tuition that live in separate households, the eBilling system contacts all authorized payers instead of only one listed address.

While students have been able to pay tuition online for several years now, the new system improves this service.

Besides letting students authorize other payers to access their eBill and pay by ePayment, the improved ePayment system also allows payers to see immediately when their payment has been accepted, while there was an overnight wait with the old online system.

Sending and receiving bills electronically is beneficial for the university and community as a whole.

“Given our attempts to be more green as a campus and as a community, we can save paper and postage and put those funds toward other costs,” Easter says.

This semester, students will receive eBills as well as tuition bills in the mail to their specified address. As of spring semester, eBilling will be the only payment system.

However, payers still have the option of printing the eBills and mailing them in with a check. Instructions to do so are on the bill, or can be found here.