Community Exchange

Hi Natalie, Middlebury uses Nelnet Campus Commerce currently, but we have reviewed Touchnet within the past year. We are currently looking at Flywire for their Student Financial Software. I'm interested to hear what others have to share about this topic.

Thank you Michele for your response.  I'm hoping for additional input that will assist us both.

Regards,

Natalie Thompson

Context:  Long-time PowerCampus and long-time Nelnet user in a non-integrated environment.  Worked well for our business practices.  Transitioned to Colleague SaaS for August 2025, and while Colleague partners with Nelnet, there was not an extensive track record of that integrated combination in the SaaS environment.  Colleague's clearly favored partner was TouchNet, and by that time we were so exhausted from the Colleague SaaS implementation, we opted for what we thought was a proven plug-n-play implementation and integration process.  In retrospect it may not have been much more work to have stayed with Nelnet.  One of the key benefits we lost in the transition was Nelnet's extensive follow-up on missed scheduled student payment drafts.  If an attempted draft failed at Nelnet, there were up to two auto reattempts 15 days apart.  If an attempted draft fails at TouchNet, there's no mechanism for reattempt and the burden shifts back to the student accounts office for follow-up.  I know nothing of Flywire's domestic operations as we only use them for 3-5 international payments a month and record those manually.

Hi Natalie, Boise State transitioned from Touchnet to Transact about 3 years ago. Be glad to chat if it would be helpful.

Mike Sullivan at Flywire was an exceptional resource in our transition and continued to support after implementation.  Transact had more of what we were looking for at the time. Flywire has been great to work with for international payments and 529 payments.

 Also, we are a PeopleSoft school.

Natalie,

Might just ask if anyone has had experience of transitioning from one payment gateway to another payment gateway.  The transition process is the pain, not vendor moving from.  Though for your case, might be better to ask if anyone has moved to Flywire?

Have never head of Flywire.  Have they given you any references to contact?  Looks like they are in the Ellucian Partner Network.

We did move from Touchnet to Transact Payments, but that was about 11 years ago.  Lot of technology changes since then.  It was messy.  Why?  Touchnet refused to give us a short term contract.  Insisted we would have to renew for 12 months.  CFO refused to pay for 12 months.  So we had to do a hurry up implementation of Transact Payments to be able to go live right before TouchNet expired.  We made it.  Were under the gun to do it but we did it.  You do need to allow sufficient time for implementation of the new vendor.  Can ask them how long they expect the implementation process to take.  

Do not say what ERP software you are using.  That would be helpful.  I am assuming some Ellucian ERP, but that may be a bad assumption.  Assume as long as they have other customers for your ERP system (this is where want references, the vendor should help lead you through the implementation.  

We went from Touchnet to PayMyTuition.  The integration to Colleague has worked well and the team at PayMyTuition has been very responsive.  We did have an issue with processing time in Colleague, but our IT team was able to work with Ellucian and PayMyTuition to resolve the issue.      

Hi Natalie, 

The University of Memphis transitioned from Touchnet to Transact in July of 2024. I researched Flywire at the time, but I was already using them for International Payments and their AR Collect modules and didn't love either of them. 

I had two main reasons for wanting to make the move; 1) the customer service with TouchNet was awful and 2) the price was getting to be ridiculous as they charged us an annual increase. Transact was half the cost of Touchnet and included many services that would have been considered add-on's with Touchnet.  For example, we were outsourcing our 1098-T's to ECSI, but that service is included with Transact. A few other pieces that are part of Transact that was not part of TouchNet include the option for families to pay online using their 529 accounts, and they have their own international payment options which is allowing us to move away from Flywire.  

The implementation process was about 4-6 months if i remember correctly and took maybe two - three hours of my time each week. The implementation team met weekly to provide updates and training. The team at Transact is fantastic, always very responsive, and helpful along the way. 

In addition to the student payment portal, we are using them for cashiering, payment plans, billing, 1098's, as well as all our eMarkets (called Marketplace in Touchnet). Moving our eMarkets to Transact was a no-brainer as Transact owns the MID's which really cut down on the SAQ's that we were required to complete each year.

Additionally, we are now working with them to implement their 3rd Party Payments module which can let 3rd parties make their payment on an invoice within their portal. Lastly, I have been working with some of the developers as they create their Collections portal which looks fantastic so far. I love that all these student account pieces that my office touches can be handled in the same system.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. 

Kent State University is and has been a long-time Transact school.  We did an RFP last year to make sure we weren’t getting too comfortable with a single vendor.  We had very few responses, and since we use so many Transact modules, none of the alternatives were truly comparable.  Overall, we are satisfied with Transact and they are commonly responsive when we inquire about their products.  We are also a Banner institution.

As you move through this process, I recommend being very clear with your terminology. We all tend to use institutional lingo, and the same terms can mean different things from one institution to another. Without clear definitions, you may think you are aligned with a vendor’s promise only to find out later that you were not talking about the same thing.

Could you please clarify if the question is solely in context of tuition (most of the responses seems to imply that..)? If question is focused on tuition, Stanford University uses Flywire (we transitioned from Cashnet). For other incoming payments, we use multiple Payment Gateways, including a application we developed for which we were awarded AFP's Pinnacle Award in 2025 for transformative change in Finance & Treasury (https://www.unirev.com/). It utilizes Stripe as the Payment Gateway.

Vassar moved from NelNet to TouchNet this spring/summer.  Our ERP is Banner.  Overall, it was a very disappointing transition.  We found the adminstrative burden to be crushing.  All customer service is left to our small office - TN provides no contact information (phone or email) for students and families to ask simple questions.  I had to personally create PDFs for families with instructions--which I think is bananas.  Our staff was suddenly in the role of tech support for families and had to become banking specialists to answer questions about to why payments were returned.  As noted by others, TN does not reattempt returned payments and does not update failed installments in a payment plan.  So many balls were dropped during the implementation that has had significant impacts on our customer experience and financial reporting. We use Flywire for international payments and 529s.  Their support is so much more responsive and personalized.  

Hi Natalie, Oberlin College transitioned just last year from an integrated Nelnet to the Flywire SFS.  We also use Flywire's eStores and 529s.  Our experience with the implementation was fantastic and we are very pleased with Flywire.  Banner is our ERP.  

At a previous school I learned that TouchNet was not a good partner and made statements that simply were not true. Don't fall for the dog n pony show. I got burnt twice and swore never ever again.