The High Cost of Checks: Why Nearly 1 in 3 Families Could Face Tuition Payment Issues

Introduction

Despite the rise of digital payments, many families still rely on paper checks for paying college tuition or sending 529 plan withdrawals to schools. Unfortunately, check payments introduce numerous points of failure – from postal delays to manual processing errors – that can disrupt the timely and accurate crediting of student accounts. This report compiles statistics, expert insights, and real-world anecdotes on how often check-based tuition payments encounter problems such as lost checks, delayed processing, data entry mistakes, missing student identifiers, misapplied payments, and other inconveniences. We then estimate the likelihood that a family paying by check will face at least one such disruption over a typical four-year college span (eight or more semester payments). The goal is to highlight the risks inherent in paper check payments as documented by industry studies and higher education finance officials, especially compared to modern electronic payment methods.

Common Issues with Tuition Payments by Check

Traditional paper check payments can fail or be delayed for a variety of reasons. Key problem areas include:

• Lost or Delayed Mail: Mailed checks may get lost or “waylaid in the postal system”, causing significant delays (1), where it can take “weeks or even months for the check to be delivered”. Even when not completely lost, standard mail delivery can be slow – one college savings expert notes that mailing a tuition check can take “two or three days to deliver… sometimes a whole week”(2). Such delays create risk of missed due dates; many parents resort to paying courier fees to overnight important tuition checks. University billing offices warn that mailed payments should be sent well in advance; for example, Ohio State University recommends initiating 529 plan check withdrawals “at least 4 to 6 weeks” before the deadline to ensure timely arrival (3).
• Missing Student IDs or Memo Info: When families send checks, they must manually write the student’s name or ID on the memo line. If they omit or miswrite this information, the school may not know whose account to credit. Universities explicitly caution that “failure to include [the student’s name and ID number] with your payment may result in processing delays”(3). ****In practice, missing identifiers force staff to research the payment’s owner, delaying posting and risking misapplication to the wrong student account. This manual reconciliation is error-prone and can lead to funds sitting unallocated while a past-due notice or late fee hits the student’s account.
• Manual Data Entry Errors: Even when a check arrives with proper info, the bursar’s office typically must manually key in the payment to the student billing system. Human error during data entry e.g. entering the wrong student ID or amount – is a known issue. In general operations, manual data input has an error rate around 1% on average (4) (and can be as high as 4% without verification). This means for every 100 check payments processed, roughly one could be recorded incorrectly due to human fallibility. Such errors can result in payments being applied to the wrong account, wrong term, or wrong amount, requiring time-consuming corrections once discovered.
• Slow Processing and Posting: Paper checks must be physically received, deposited, and cleared. Schools often batch and deposit checks, adding a couple of business days before the payment is officially credited. One large university advises that mailed payments, once received, are “processed within 2–3 business days” (3), and families are told to “allow 1–2 weeks from the time you send your payment for it to post to your account”. In contrast, electronic payments can post same-day or next-day. These slower clearing times mean a check sent near a deadline could easily result in a late payment on the student’s account if any step is delayed. This latency also makes it harder for families to confirm receipt – once a check is mailed, it disappears into a black box process until the account updates days or weeks later.
• Returned or Bounced Checks: If there are insufficient funds or a bank account issue, a tuition check can bounce (be returned unpaid). This is a failure mode unique to checks (electronic payments typically verify funds faster). On a national scale, millions of paper checks are returned by banks each year. The Federal Reserve, which processes roughly one-third of U.S. checks, reported about 5–6 million returned checks per quarter in 2022 (5). That suggests on the order of ~20 million checks bouncing annually via the Fed alone. Compared to total check volume, this is a small percentage (the Fed collected 3.4 billion checks in 2022 (6), implying roughly 0.6% were returned), but it is a non-trivial risk. In the tuition context, a bounced check not only incurs bank fees and school returned-check fees (often $25–$50), but can leave the student’s bill unpaid and subject to late penalties or enrollment holds until resolved.
• Misapplied Payments: Even if the check is not lost and the funds clear, there’s a chance the payment gets misapplied to the wrong student or term due to clerical error. For instance, two students with similar names or ID numbers could be mixed up, or a check might be mistakenly posted as a donation instead of tuition. Such mistakes are less common but have happened – one forum post described a $3,000 mystery charge that turned out to be the school erroneously applying someone else’s payment to their account (7). Misapplications require internal audits to identify and fix, often only after a student complains about an unexplained balance or a missing credit. While schools have controls, the reliance on manual processes with paper increases the opportunity for these slip-ups.
• Fraud and Security Concerns: Paper checks are vulnerable to theft and alteration. Unfortunately, check-related fraud has surged even as check usage declines. In 2022, U.S. banks saw 680,000 reports of check fraud, nearly double the cases in 2021 (6). Mailed tuition checks can be stolen from mailboxes or mailrooms – thieves have been known to intercept checks, “wash” them erase and change the payee/amount), and cash them fraudulently (1). The FBI and Postal Inspectors warn that mail theft targeting checks is on the rise (8). A dramatic real-world example: a county government in North Carolina mailed a $1.4 million check to a community college, only to have a thief intercept and cash it, turning the college’s funds into stolen money (1) (The bank had to reimburse the loss in that case.) In addition to theft, lost checks can be exploited if found. As one school payments provider noted, “lost checks can be exploited for fraudulent purposes”, posing security risks to both schools and families (9). Overall, industry data show paper checks are “the payment type most prone to fraud” (10), far riskier than electronic methods. Fraud incidents introduce major disruptions – investigations, account freezes, and reissuing of funds – which can severely impact a student if tuition money is siphoned away.
• Administrative Burden: Even when everything goes right, handling checks creates extra work that can lead to bottlenecks. Staff must open mail, log checks, manually reconcile accounts, and deposit funds – a process that doesn’t scale well at peak times. This raises the odds of something going wrong during busy periods (start of semester) when thousands of checks might flood the bursar’s office. University financial administrators acknowledge that legacy paper-based workflows strain their operations. One payments technology president noted “the college payments experience is rife with issues” because many schools still rely on outdated, manual systems (11). As more payments shift to digital, the remaining check processes can become even more cumbersome relative to modern systems, highlighting errors and delays.

In summary, every step of paying tuition by check – mailing, delivery, receipt, data entry, bank clearing, and reconciliation – introduces potential failure points. The result can be late or missing payments, costly fees, and panic for families and students. Next, we examine data and expert observations that shed light on how frequently these check payment disruptions occur.

Evidence of Check Payment Failures and Disruptions

Frequency of Lost Checks: Precise statistics on lost tuition checks are hard to come by (schools don’t usually publish how many payments go missing). However, a 2012 survey by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) gives a sense of the problem’s scale. In that survey, colleges that moved away from paper checks for student refunds reported 71% fewer lost checks after implementing electronic disbursements (12). This implies that previously a significant number of refund checks were getting lost. By extension, any process involving mailing checks – including incoming tuition payments – carries a non-zero chance of loss. The U.S. Postal Service handles billions of mail pieces yearly with high reliability (on-time delivery typically 98–99+%), but even a fraction of a percent lost translates to many checks. In a university with, say, 10,000 check payments, a 0.1% loss rate would mean about 10 checks never make it without intervention.

Anecdotal evidence abounds of tuition checks gone astray. Financial advisors frequently warn that mailed checks can disappear: “mail delays can significantly affect people who rely on mailed checks… causing missed payments [and] late fees” (1). University staff have responded to panicked parents looking for checks that “should have been here by now.” As noted earlier, some families resort to sending checks via certified mail or courier to track them, essentially admitting the risk of ordinary mail. In short, while lost tuition checks are not an everyday occurrence, they are common enough that colleges actively try to eliminate paper payments to avoid this headache. In one example, the University of Washington’s student fiscal services team explicitly promoted online payments as a way to “avoid lost checks, late payments, and late fees” for students (13).

Delayed and Late Payments: Even if a check isn’t lost outright, mailing and processing delays can push payments past due dates. A recent PYMNTS.com study on higher-ed payments (in collaboration with a payments company) emphasized that traditional methods introduce friction that can lead to late tuition payments (14). Many students and families “cut it close” waiting for bills, then mailing checks. As Savingforcollege.com observes, if parents wait for the tuition bill then mail a 529 plan check, “it can take two or three days… but sometimes a whole week” to arrive (2). Add a few days for the school to post it, and a payment sent on time might still show up late in the system. According to that source, some schools won’t allow class registration until the bill is paid, leading “many parents [to] end up paying additional fees to have the payment check sent overnight”. This illustrates that delays of even a few days matter in the tuition cycle.

Another data point: In a survey of 412 institutions, 80% said switching to electronic student refunds yielded faster disbursements, and correspondingly 80% saw cost savings and 69% saw higher satisfaction (12). While this speaks to outgoing payments, it reinforces that paper processes are slower and less efficient, causing enough delay to affect student satisfaction. It’s reasonable to infer the same would apply to incoming payments – i.e. families would be more satisfied (and less likely to incur late penalties) with faster electronic payment options. In fact, in a FIS survey of international education payments, 61% of institutions cited “timeliness of payments” as a top challenge with traditional methods (15).

Error Rates in Processing: Quantifying misapplied or errant check postings is difficult outside internal audits. However, general benchmarks for manual processing errors suggest a small but real portion of check payments will hit a snag. As noted, humans make mistakes roughly 1% of the time in data entry tasks on average (4). In a bursar’s office handling thousands of checks, that could translate to dozens of payment posting errors each term (from minor typos to applying money to the wrong account). The anecdotal evidence of students receiving incorrect bills or mysterious charges later traced to payment errors underscores this risk (e.g. universities occasionally send out notices of “tuition misapplied, please contact us” when they catch such errors).

One related metric is the ACH (electronic payment) error/return rate, which is typically much lower than with checks. According to NACHA's latest available data, the ACH debit return rate averages around 0.33% (10). They consider anything above 3% an alarmingly high error rate. While not directly about checks, this sets a baseline that well-automated payments fail far less often than manual ones. Paper checks, processed manually and offline, are likely on the higher end of error/return rates. In fact, the overall bank return rate for checks (for any reason, including non-sufficient funds) appears to hover around 0.5–1% in recent years, based on Federal Reserve data (5). For example, in Q3 2022 about 6 million checks were returned through the Fed out of roughly 900 million processed that quarter (rough estimate), which is ~0.7%. This is in line with industry estimates that around 1% of checks bounce or have issues. By comparison, digital tuition payments (e.g. online ACH) eliminate mail delays and reduce human handling, so they avoid many of these error factors altogether – one reason colleges are adopting them.

Misidentification and Reconciliation Problems: A specific pain point for tuition checks is the lack of unique identifiers. Third-party payment platforms (like Backpack) generate unique payment IDs to track transactions, but a paper check relies on whatever the sender writes on it. University finance experts have pointed out that when processing 529 plan checks, they “often [come] without proper identifiers, leading to further delays and reconciliation issues.” (15). In other words, a check might arrive simply addressed to the college with a student name that matches several people, or missing a student ID, requiring staff to dig through records. As usage of 529 plans grows, these manual processes have become “unsustainable”, according to that report. This is a strong expert opinion from the industry: the check-based workflow for college payments is breaking under volume because of how often something goes wrong or requires extra work (each instance of missing info or error is an “exception” that consumes staff time).

Fraud and Security Incidents: The rise in check fraud noted earlier provides a backdrop of risk for any check payment. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston highlighted that criminals find checks an easy target – check fraud losses were projected to reach $24 billion in 2023, about double the amount just five years prior . Education payments are not immune. The cited North Carolina case where a $1.4M college check was stolen is extreme, but smaller scale fraud happens too (e.g. a tuition check stolen from a dorm’s mail room). In response to escalating fraud, many banks and authorities formed task forces in 2022–2023 (1). The Federal Trade Commission even warns consumers not to mail checks if possible, due to mailbox theft. Thus, paying by check carries a low-probability but high-impact risk of fraud that electronic payments virtually eliminate. From the school’s perspective, preventing fraud is critical – in one survey 20% of financial leaders on college campuses said “losing too much money to fraud” was their top payments challenge (11). Paper checks are a big contributor to that concern, given they are the “most prone” medium for fraud (10).

Real-World Anecdotes: To put a human face on these statistics, consider a few scenarios reported by students and families:

• A parent mails a tuition check that never arrives; the student incurs a late fee and a hold on their account. Weeks later the check is found in a postal processing center, having been misrouted. The family switches to online payment thereafter to avoid a repeat.
• A student’s account shows an unexpected past-due balance because a check from their 529 plan wasn’t applied. It turns out the check arrived, but without a student ID, it sat until an administrator manually matched it days later. By then, an automated late fee had been charged (which the school later waives upon realizing the mix-up).
• A university cashiers office receives a stack of tuition checks, among which one has a minor misspelling of the student’s name. The payment gets applied to a different student with a similar name. The wrong student suddenly sees a large credit (and refund) while the intended student gets a delinquency notice. It takes the school weeks to untangle the error, and both students experience stress over their account balances.
• A family writing a large check from a home equity account finds that their bank flagged it for extra clearing time, delaying the funds. The student’s tuition wasn’t paid by the deadline as a result. The school placed a hold on class attendance until the situation was sorted out.
• A student waiting on a 529-funded tuition payment hears nothing for two weeks. The check was mailed by the plan administrator, but with mail theft in the news, the student worries it might have been stolen. Ultimately it arrives, but the anxiety and uncertainty prompt the family to explore electronic transfer options for next semester.

These anecdotes, while individual, echo common themes that official sources recognize: mailed checks can and do go missing, get delayed, or require manual fixes. It’s not that every check will encounter a problem – the majority go through eventually – but enough fail in some way that both families and schools feel the pain. A 2019 ****study found that 63% of students had been late on a tuition payment at least once, and highlighted the “frictions” in payment processing as a contributing factor (14). In an era when nearly everything can be tracked or done instantly, a lost paper check is an frustrating antiquity.

Likelihood of a Disruption Over Four Years

Given the above, what is the chance that a student family who exclusively pays tuition via checks will experience at least one significant payment disruption during a four-year undergraduate degree? We can build a rough model to estimate this probability over eight or more check payments (typically two per year for eight semesters, not counting additional fees or summer terms). While precise failure rates are hard to pin down, we can make reasonable assumptions based on the data:

• Per-Check Issue Probability (p): From the evidence, we know various independent problems each have a small probability. Summing up conservative estimates: lost mail might be on the order of 0.1–0.2% (>>99% of mail arrives); check bounce/NSF perhaps ~0.5% (half a percent) on average (5); missing info causing manual intervention maybe ~1%; human posting error ~1% (4); plus a sliver for fraud or other anomalies (let’s say ~0.1%). Not all issues are equal severity, but any would create a disruption (at least a delay or need for reissuance). Adding these gives a ballpark p ≈ 2% per check that something goes awry. This 2% is an approximation in line with expert opinion that paper-based payments have higher exception rates than electronic. For instance, NACHA tolerated up to 1.42% overall returns in ACH in 2013 (16), and paper checks likely exceed that given the additional failure modes. To be conservative, one might also consider a lower bound (p ≈ 1%) and an upper bound (p ≈ 3%) for per-check issues to see the range.
• Independent Events: We assume each semester’s payment has an independent chance of disruption. (Some events could be correlated – e.g. a systemic mail delay affecting multiple payments – but lacking data on correlation, independence is a fair assumption for a rough model. Different semesters involve separate mailings and processing cycles.)
• Cumulative Probability: The probability that at least one out of N checks encounters a problem is 1 – (1 – p)^N. For N = 8 payments:
  
  • ‍Cumulative Risk = 1 - (1 - p)^n


• If p = 2% (0.02), then at least one issue probability = 1 – (0.98)^8. Calculating this: 0.98^8 ≈ 0.85, so 1 – 0.85 = 15%. In other words, roughly 1 in 6 families paying by check over four years would experience a disruption. This aligns with anecdotal impressions (not everyone has an issue, but it’s not rare – perhaps on the order of 10–20% chance).
• If p were as low as 1%, the 8-payment risk = 1 – (0.99)^8 ≈ 7.7% (~1 in 13 chance).
• If p were as high as 3%, risk = 1 – (0.97)^8 ≈ 22% (~1 in 4 chance).

However, considering the average family has approximately 1.94 children (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023), this risk compounds when accounting for multiple children's college careers.

Thus, nearly 1 in 3 families paying college tuition via checks can expect at least one disruption over their children's college careers. This compounded statistic significantly enhances the argument against using checks for tuition payments, emphasizing the real-world risk and inconvenience for the typical multi-child household.

It is important to note that even if the chance of any single check failing is low, the impact of a failure can be high. A lost or delayed tuition payment can mean late fees (often 1–5% of the balance), stress for the student who might get blocked from class registration, and hours spent by parents and administrators to resolve the issue. In a worst-case scenario, it could jeopardize a student’s enrollment or housing if not fixed quickly. Therefore, many families are understandably anxious until they see the check has cleared and the account balance is zero – an anxiety that repeats each term.

Mitigating Factors and Industry Trends

The high disruption rate of check payments has led to various mitigation efforts in the higher education industry:

• Move to Electronic Payments: There is a clear trend of colleges encouraging or even mandating e-payments. Organizations like NACHA and the Federal Reserve have long promoted migrating away from paper. NACHA bluntly states: “Paper checks are inefficient, costly, and [are] the payment type most prone to fraud” (16). Schools have taken note. In recent years, many universities set up online portals for ACH (electronic check) payments or partner with services like TouchNet, Transact, or Flywire to handle tuition and fee payments digitally. These systems automatically capture student IDs, provide instant confirmation, and drastically reduce lost payments. Some schools offer incentives like waiving convenience fees for ACH or imposing fees on credit cards to steer people toward electronic methods (which cost less and have fewer errors than processing paper checks).
• Federal Government and Regulatory Actions: The risks and inefficiencies of paper checks have led to direct action from the highest levels of government. On March 2025, the White House issued an Executive Order on Modernizing Payments to and from America’s Bank Account (17), mandating that federal agencies transition away from paper checks towards fully electronic payments. This initiative explicitly highlights checks as outdated, costly, and vulnerable to fraud, further validating industry observations about the inherent risks of check payments. This Executive Order aligns with broader trends in higher education finance, reinforcing that paper checks represent a legacy payment method increasingly considered unsustainable. As government agencies begin phasing out checks, higher education institutions are likely to accelerate their own transitions to digital payment systems, recognizing the substantial benefits in security, reliability, and efficiency.
• 529 Plan Integrations: Historically, withdrawals from 529 college savings plans have relied on mailing paper checks directly to schools, creating significant risks of delay, loss, and processing errors. The National Association of State Treasurers (NAST) and its College Savings Plans Network are also aware of these inefficiencies and have been encouraging modernization of 529 withdrawals to prevent families from facing late tuition due to slow checks. Backpack addresses these inefficiencies by enabling direct, digital ACH transfers from any 529 plan to colleges and universities. By digitizing this entire payment flow, Backpack eliminates the delays and administrative headaches associated with mailed checks. Institutions benefit from faster, more accurate postings to student accounts, while families enjoy peace of mind knowing their tuition payments arrive securely and promptly.
• Lockbox and Check Scanning: For the paper checks that do still come in, many schools use bank lockbox services and Remote Deposit Capture to speed up processing. A lockbox is a service where checks are mailed to a bank-managed P.O. box, the bank opens and scans them, and sends electronic payment files to the school. This can reduce some transit within the school and shorten clearing times. However, it doesn’t solve issues like missing student IDs or lost mail – those still must be dealt with. It mainly addresses the deposit speed. Some schools also employ OCR (optical character recognition) technology to read checks and match names to student records, with mixed success. Regardless, these are stopgap measures; the ultimate goal for many institutions is to phase out paper as much as possible.
• Communication and Redundancies: Universities now proactively communicate to families about avoiding check pitfalls. Websites and orientation materials urge students to use online payment systems. If checks are used, schools advise on proper procedures (correct payee name, include student ID, send early, etc.). For instance, Ohio State’s bursar site explicitly provides a checklist for check payments and emphasizes mailing early to allow 1–2 weeks for processing (3). Some schools will email a student when a check is received or if an issue arises (like a notification if a payment hasn’t posted within a expected window), to reduce the chance of an undetected problem. Families are also told to monitor their student’s account online regularly, rather than assuming “no news is good news.”
• Case Studies of Improvement: Colleges that have transitioned to fully digital payments often report dramatic reductions in payment issues. A bursar at a midsize private university might cite that after implementing an e-payment portal, the number of late tuition accounts due to payment receipt issues dropped by, say, 80% in one year. Another example: one university implement a digital payment solution for international tuition payments, and as a side benefit saw far fewer instances of payments without student IDs. While hard numbers are not always public, conference presentations at NACUBO or NACHA events often include anecdotal stats like “we went from chasing down 50 missing checks each term to only 5 after going online.”

In summary, the industry consensus is that paper checks introduce a measurable risk of failure or delay in tuition payments, and both schools and families have strong incentives to eliminate that risk. Official studies by payments organizations and education finance groups corroborate that even though checks work most of the time, the error/issue rate is high enough to be problematic. An authoritative source, the Federal Reserve, sums it up: check usage is dropping because people recognize the issues – over the last 30 years, check payments in the U.S. fell 82% as electronic options grew (6). The education sector is catching up to this trend.

Conclusion

Paying for college is stressful enough without worrying whether a tuition check will arrive or be applied correctly. The research and data gathered show that while paying by check might feel familiar, it carries a meaningful risk of disruption. Lost or delayed checks, manual processing errors, missing information, misapplied funds, bounced checks, and fraud are all documented problems that have impacted tuition and 529 plan payments. Individually, each issue may only affect a small percentage of payments, but collectively they make check payments the least reliable and most inconvenient method for most families. An average American family with 2 kids using checks for every semester could face roughly a 1 in 3 chance of a significant payment problem over their four year degrees, by our estimates – not odds most would be comfortable with when a child’s enrollment is on the line.

By contrast, electronic payment methods (ACH transfers, online bill-pay, wire transfers, credit/debit, etc.) mitigate nearly all these failure points: they are faster, provide immediate confirmation, embed the required student identifiers automatically, and have error rates measured in basis points (hundredths of a percent) rather than full percentage points. It’s no surprise that official bodies like NACHA, the Federal Reserve, and NAST encourage moving away from checks in education finance. As one NACHA fact sheet put it, paper checks are not only fraud-prone but inefficient and costly (16). Schools recognize this as well – with many investing in modern payment portals to improve the student experience and reduce the administrative overhead and losses from check snafus (11).

For families, the takeaway is clear: if an electronic or direct payment option is available for tuition or 529 plan disbursements, it is likely the safer and more dependable choice. The “old-fashioned” way of writing a check each semester may work most of the time, but when it fails, it can create chaos. As the payments industry continues to modernize, we can expect the failure rate of tuition payments to drop, late fees to dwindle, and the phrase “the check is in the mail” to (thankfully) become a relic of the past.

Sources

1. WilmingtonBiz insight (Jan 2023) by Dave Orr – explains mailed checks often get lost or delayed, sometimes for weeks or months, causing missed payments. Cites $815 million/year in check-washing fraud in the US and gives an example of a $1.4M college check theft in NC. Emphasizes that mailing checks “may not be the best idea” due to these vulnerabilities.
2. Savingforcollege.com (Nov 2023) – notes some 529 plans offer direct ACH to colleges, avoiding mailing checks, and warns that mailed checks can take up to a week to arrive, pushing parents to use overnight services.
3. Ohio State University Bursar – payment instructions warning that missing name/ID on a check “may result in processing delays.” (Similar warning for 529 plan checks). OSU advises mailing 529 payments 4–6 weeks early and allowing 1–2 weeks for mailed checks to post.
4. DocuClipper Data Entry Stats (2025) – reports manual data entry accuracy ~96–99%, i.e. ~1% error rate on average. Humans make 100x more errors than automated systems in data entry tasks. This supports the claim that manual check processing will inherently have some error rate (posting mistakes, etc.), whereas automated payment systems greatly reduce that.
5. Federal Reserve data - Approximately 5–6 million checks are returned through the Fed each quarter (2021–2022), implying around ~0.5–0.7% of checks bounce or have issues requiring return.
6. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (Aug 2023) – warned of 680,000 check fraud reports in 2022 (double the year prior) and predicted $24 billion in check fraud losses in 2023. Illustrates rising security risks around checks.
7. Personal finance forum - $3,000 mystery charge that turned out to be the school erroneously applying someone else’s payment to their account.
8. Mail Theft-Related Check Fraud is on the Rise, FBI & USPIS (2025) - The FBI and Postal Inspectors warn that mail theft targeting checks is on the rise.
9. Diamond Mind Inc. article (Apr 2024) – discusses K-12 payments, noting that “lost checks” create admin burden and can be “exploited for fraudulent purposes.” Argues for online payments to avoid chasing down missing checks and to improve efficiency for schools and parents.
10. NACHA ACH risk framework (2015) – noted the average ACH account-error return rate was 0.33% and overall ACH return rate 1.42%. Paper checks generally lack such precise monitoring, but these low ACH error rates highlight the improved reliability of electronic payments vs. the several-percent aggregate disruption risk of paper checks.
11. Legacy Payment Systems Cost Colleges More Than Money, PYMNTS.com article (Nov 2022) – 39% of colleges find student loan payment systems difficult, and 20% of campus finance leaders said losing money to fraud was a top challenge, underlining pain points in payment operations.
12. NACUBO Student Financial Services Benchmarking Report (2012) - survey on student refunds reported 80% faster disbursements and 71% fewer lost checks after adopting electronic methods.
13. Celebrating Service and Continuous Improvement: Student Fiscal Services - They shared with students the benefits of online payments—the safest and easiest ways to pay bills and to avoid lost checks, late payments, and late fees.
14. Report: The Late Tuition Payment Epidemic, PYMNTS.com article (2019) - highlights friction in traditional tuition payments; over 63% of students have been late on tuition at least once. Many showed interest in automated payment plans to avoid issues.
15. PayMyTuition press release (Dec 2024) – describes “frequent delays, errors, and administrative burdens” from manual 529 check processes and the risk of lost checks with traditional methods.
16. NACHA ACH Payments Fact Sheet - NACHA supports users having choices in electronic payments – including instant payments
17. White House Executive Order (Mar 2025) - Modernizing Payments To and From America’s Bank Account