WU Expands Service for Int’l Students

In an attempt to make it easy for Asian students to pay for their tuition fees, Western Union Co. (WU) has introduced global tuition payment services with Hana Bank, a leading bank in South Korea, as well as ChinaPay and CITIC Bank in China.

Via this facility students taking up courses in international universities will be able to make payment for tuition fees in their domestic currency.

Western Union is particularly focusing on expanding in China and Korea, since a large student population from this region go abroad for higher studies, creating a potentially larger market for international payments. The company expects this trend to gain momentum going forward. At present nearly 35% of international students in the U.S. hail from China and Korea.

Recently Western Union also started its services in India though Weizmann Forex and Paul Merchants Limited. Through these agents Indian students can make payments for tuition fees of U.S. universities in their local currency.

By serving Korean Indian and Chinese students studying in the U.S, Western Union will be able to tap approximately 50% of the total international students studying in the region.

Western Union has also launches a new payment platform called GlobalPay. Via this service users will be able to make tuition payments globally in their own currency in more than 60 countries. After making payments the students will be intimated about the status of their transaction.

Western Union has a separate platform – FX Solutions – for Educational Institutions, which provides the education sector with state-of-the-art, customized solutions for making and receiving domestic and international payments. Western Union is already serving over 400 world-class universities in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia by processing outbound vendor payments and inbound student tuition and fees of these institutions.

Western Union currently retains a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

Other companies like Moneygram International Inc. (MGI), Citigroup, Inc. (C), HDFC Bank Ltd. (HDB) also offer forex currency service internationally and are worth considering.