Fastest Ways to Send Money for Tuition Abroad: South Asia Guide

Vavita Marketing Team

• 3 min read
Fastest Ways to Send Money for Tuition Abroad: South Asia Guide

International tuition payments can be challenging for students and their families in South Asia. Sending money for tuition abroad must be fast, transparent, and affordable. Yet, it often comes with delays, high fees, and poor exchange rates.  Such issues can jeopardize a student’s enrollment, and hidden costs may add up to hundreds of dollars (or equivalent). This guide addresses these pain points and compares the fastest options for paying university fees abroad.

Common Pain Points for South Asian Families

  • High Forex Fees & Poor Exchange Rates: Converting local currency (Rupees, Taka, etc.) to USD, GBP, or EUR often incurs steep fees and subpar rates. Hidden bank charges, SWIFT fees and currency conversion markups can ambush a student’s budget, making overseas education even more expensive.
  • Delays in Transfers: Traditional methods are often slow. International bank wire transfers typically take 1–5 business days to reach a foreign university. Sometimes, it takes even longer, causing anxiety as deadlines approach. SWIFT payments can also be hard to track in real time causing even more stress and anxiety.
  • Intermediary bank fees: When you use SWIFT to make an overseas payment, it’s common for the daisy-chain of banks involved to each take a cut from the proceeds. In the worst case, this can add up to a lot of money, and also mean the school doesn’t recognise your payment - delaying or even jeapordising your studies.
  • Complex Procedures & Paperwork: The process can be confusing. Students in Bangladesh need to create paper based ‘Student Files,’ while those in Pakistan have to go to their banks and fill out V78/V82 forms to send funds abroad. Families may need to manually provide other documents such as tax filing documents or sources of income. A small mistake in any of the documentation above can lead to rejections or long processing times.

Comparing Ways to Pay University Fees Abroad

There are several ways to send money for tuition overseas, each with pros and cons. Here’s how the common methods stack up for South Asian students abroad:

  • Bank Wire Transfers (SWIFT): Traditional bank transfers are widely used to pay universities directly. They are secure but often slow and costly. A SWIFT wire can take several days to clear. Banks also charge fees on both ends and often use below-market exchange rates, which drives up the overall cost. This method has been used for many years, but is not the fastest or cheapest for international tuition payments and can be unreliable in some cases.
  • Money Transfer Operators (Western Union, etc.): Companies like Western Union and MoneyGram are popular for remittances in South Asia.. The upside is  convenience, but the downside is higher fees and weaker exchange rates compared to fintech alternatives. Additionally, in many cases students have to physically go to Western Union agents to make payments which makes the process manual and slow. Additionally, students have to make sure their education institutions accept payments from Western Union otherwise they may face delays or rejections.
  • University Payment Portals (Flywire, etc.): Many universities have dedicated payment portals like Flywire for international students.  In many cases, especially in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, these platforms charge very high fees, and may require students to pay in foreign currency such as GBP, EUR, USD or CAD to achieve an acceptable price and service level - leaving the real problem of currency conversion largely down to the user to solve. Also, local banks will charge you their fees and other charges such as SWIFT fees when sending money to these platforms.
  • Fast, Secure, and Affordable Education Payments (Vavita): Pakistani and Bangladeshi students looking for the fastest way to pay tuition abroad should consider Vavita. Vavita offers a fast, secure, and affordable solution tailored to international education payments. Unlike generic money transfer services, Vavita is built specifically for students’ tuition and education expenses. The platform is licensed as a Money Service Business by Fintrac in Canada - giving families confidence their funds are safe. Students can not only pay for tuition fees but they can also send their living expenses payments through Vavita as well. It provides highly competitive exchange rates (avoiding the heavy forex markups banks impose) transparency,  and no fees – so you know exactly what you’re paying with no surprises. More importantly, students pay in their local currency. Which means if you are a Bangladeshi, you pay in Taka, not Dollars. This gives an extra convenience factor to students. Transfers are processed quickly and reliably, ensuring your university receives the funds on time.

Speed, transparency, and affordability are paramount when paying university fees from South Asia. With Vavita, students can count on all three – rapid transfers, transparent pricing, and the peace of mind that tuition money will arrive securely at the school. Instead of worrying about forex fees or delays, you can focus on your studies, knowing your tuition is handled by a reliable, student-focused service.