Popular payment provider PayPal – the choice for busy parents!

Over the last few years, the way we pay for things has changed dramatically, from cash and cheques, to debit and credit card and most recently to cashless, mobile and contactless payments.  Each new technology smooths the process – but what does this mean for schools?

Invariably, when a school contacts a parent it’s because they need them to do something, attend an event, collect lost property or pay for something, and the best way to ensure it is done is by making it as easy as possible for parents to respond. We know from working with schools over the past 15 years, that a key consideration when evaluating new systems for parents is ease of use. Why? Because by making life easier for parents, schools get a much better response.

New services such as PayPal have become increasingly popular, now used by more than 20 million people across the UK. Its ‘frictionless’ service means users can make faster, safer and easier payments than ever before.

ParentMail actively designs its services to be easy and simple to use for both schools and parents, and its all new online payments platform delivers this. As well as being the most reliable, cost effective, socially inclusive online payments system available on the market, it also offers a free mobile App for parents as well as PayPal, meaning payments can be completed from the comfort of an armchair – or on the go - in literally seconds.

Dawlish Community College, a secondary School in Devon, who have been using ParentMail since 2014, have first-hand experience of the effect of the winning combination of a mobile App with PayPal:

Nicky Cruickshank, Finance Officer at the college told us, “PayPal has been a very popular choice for many of our parents with 40% of them choosing to pay this way. It means they don’t have to remember card details and can make the payment in seconds on their smartphone.”

ParentMail Payments Director, Martin Temple, told us “Launching our all new payments system, including PayPal as a payment option for parents, was an extremely exciting thing for us to offer schools.

PayPal has been a payments option for schools for several months now, and we’re really pleased to see that it’s the choice for many of our parents. With an App which allows parents to top up dinner money or pay for a school trip with just a few taps, it makes sense that busy parents would want to use a quick and easy payment option like PayPal, which doesn’t require them to remember their card details.

“We’re very proud to be the only online payments system which offers PayPal as an option and we know that for many schools, having a socially inclusive payment platform is incredibly important.”

With parents able to make payments quickly, it means a happier school office with less cash handling, chasing payments and less time spent on administration: “Our parents have told us that they really like the convenience of being able to pay ‘on the go’ and not having to send in cash/cheques” Nicky told us, “Parents are now immediately notified of any items which require payment and can action this, wherever they are, instantly!”

If you’re a UK school or college interested in offering your parents a quick and easy way to top up dinner money or pay for school uniform, get in touch today and we’ll show you how easy it could be. Contact us on 01733 595959 or email enquire@parentmail.co.uk

Take a look for yourself at our online payments video HERE