<p>So what is the best credit card to use for tuition payments? Heard American Express was good–I just have Visa.</p>
<p>It depends on the school. UT-Austin doesn’t accept Visa, for instance. Otherwise, I would use the card that gives the most rewards (such as airline miles). Be careful, though - a lot of schools charge an extra 2 or 3 percent if you pay by credit card!</p>
<p>My s’s schools wouldn’t let us use a cr card without assessing a fee that would have been more than the points/cash back value on the card. So best to check that out too.</p>
<p>Yes, we are charged a 3% fee for using any bank card. We opt for an e-check as it has no fee and is immediate. The entire process is painful enough as it is.</p>
<p>It totally depends on the college. Some won’t accept CCs at all. Some charge and extra fee to use a CC. Some accept Visa but not AmEx.</p>
<p>If you’re lucky and the college accepts a CC without charging a fee then get a CC with the highest cash back plan you can get, for example a Costco AmEx, or various Visa cards.</p>
<p>You need to check on that particular college first.</p>
<p>I have enjoyed (??) paying tuition bills with my credit card for both my sons, including community colleges in NJ and NC. The big university tuition bills almost come with a plane ticket home considering the credit card airline reward. None of these schools charge a fee for paying with Visa. For me it has been the property taxes that I don’t pay with credit card due to prohibitive fees charged by the county.</p>
<p>Oh I wish I could pay tuition by credit card! Just imagine how many points I’d have by now!</p>
<p>I’m surprised that any college allows CC payment without a fee. Why should everyone else be subsidizing the costs to the college so that some individuals can get the cash back/flights/rewards?</p>
<p>Fill in the blanks:</p>
<p>I’m surprised that any _____ allows CC payment without a fee. Why should everyone else be subsidizing the costs to the _____ so that some individuals can get the cash back/flights/rewards? </p>
<p>gas station?
restaurant?
grocery store?
department store?
online vendor?</p>
<p>They all pay fees, and with the possible exception of a few gas stations they all accept credit cards with no penalty fee. Must have something to do with convenience and assurance of getting their funds.</p>
<p>All payment forms have costs.</p>
<p>I don’t think that colleges would like parents to pay in cash. Think of the security, accounting and armored trucks that would be needed.</p>
<p>The cost of paying with a credit card can add a lot to the tuition or other college bill. Pay attention to school policies for payments for anything- a small PERCENTAGE, not a flat fee, can be a huge dollar amount when applied to tuition or housing. Also- this is in addition to any interest fees charged by the credit card company if the card balance isn’t paid off within the month. </p>
<p>I wanted to get points by using my credit card for a car purchase- found out it isn’t allowed by the government (state?), darn. Did save significant money by getting a low interest loan I paid off as soon as I could (ie when the paperwork finally came) to qualify for a rebate on the vehicle.</p>
<p>When my S started college, I got a mileage CC as soon as I realized how useful that might be after a few semesters. Unfortunately they tacked on a percentage after the first year. But I got hooked on the mileage cards, and haven’t been without one since. </p>
<p>My Ds schools all added a percentage, so NO WAY would I pay that. </p>
<p>AmEX/Visa/Mastercard all have various banks associated with them, various cashback/mileage/points programs. You need to figure out your needs, your CC use, and see if one makes sense. </p>
<p>For myself, the Delta AmEx, though they charge a hefty fee per year, makes sense. They fly where I want to go, give me free luggage check in, and a cheaper companion ticket every year. My S says they require more miles for international trips. </p>
<p>Look around on the web for blogs that deal with FF miles and CC rebates, if you want to go that route. </p>
<p>To previous posters, yes, it is silly, a burden to other students, and I have not heard of colleges offering CC payment as a free option for a while now.</p>
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<p>Paying tuition by check or online transfer does not result in a 3 or 4 or 5% fee on that amount to the college. No one is suggesting that it should be cash only.</p>
<p>NJRes, sorry but I don’t see paying tuition to be the same as paying for a tank of gas or a meal with a credit card. The main difference being that the student is going to be at the school for four years, not exiting the gas station or restaurant or grocery store after making the payment with a CC.</p>
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<p>Someone has to process physical mail, open the envelopes, lookup the account that the check goes with, and batch them to the bank. Online processing with credit cards skips the manual steps. Does hiring staff to process checks amount to much? It’s certainly not zero.</p>
<p>I have made online bank transfers in the past and I don’t recall whether the fee was a flat rate or a percentage. Probably a flat rate. Those transfers were a lot bigger than college tuition so that might have been a decent deal but those were from brokerage accounts - not checking accounts.</p>
<p>We were able to pay our oldest child’s college payments with a credit card (without any fees) but, as others have said, we would have been assessed a 3 - 4% fee for doing that with our next two kids.</p>
<p>Many colleges charge for paying via credit card. We had one kid at Northeastern for a year… I think they allowed Visa payment w/o extra charge. It’s worth checking you college website.</p>
<p>For our kids, there is NO extra charge to parents for using the CC for paying fees or other costs assessed by our kids’ U. We did check that our carefully. If you want to use their payment plan, you have to pay a fee for each semester that you use it.</p>
<p>We use the CapitolOne Spark Business credit card that gives us 2% cash back on ALL purchases with no maximum. It has given us back a tidy sum over the years for all the tuition we have paid and we have the option to use our cash as we see fit. </p>
<p>We were also able to use it to charge funds toward H’s retirement account and get 2% back on that as well–sounds weird but that’s how it worked. We charged our photovoltaic system on that credit card & use it for most of our purchases, but we do charge gas on our AmEx Costco, which gives us 4% cash back.</p>
<p>** This thread’s over a year old ***</p>
<p>Paying by credit card is not less costly nor less time consuming for the entity processing the payment, unless you’re talking about a huge store that processes thousands of payments on a daily basis. </p>
<p>The company I work for processes about 10,000 payments per year, about 1/3 on-line. We are a non-profit and actively discourage people from paying by cc. That said, we’ll take the money any way they want to give it to us. However, the fee for depositing a check is a few cents; the cost of processing a credit card for the same amount is 3-5% depending on which kind of card the customer uses. All those cc payments have to be reconciled just like a check payment. The only difference for us would be the act of opening the envelope (although we have to print out a paper document for a cc payment done on-line. I think that holds true for almost any entity that accepts both types of payments and does not deal in a very high volume.</p>
<p>Yes, the thread is old. I bumped into it during a search. I bumped it because tis the season for college payments.</p>