A growing list of universities across Canada are dropping credit cards as a method of paying tuition, but Ottawa students are unlikely to notice a change.
Recently, Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia joined St. Thomas University in Fredericton and the Universities of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, British Columbia, Calgary and Alberta as institutions that won’t take credit cards.
The University of Ottawa and Carleton University have never accepted credit cards for tuition payments.
UOttawa spokesperson Julie Tanguay said students can pay their tuition by cheque, cash or debit, but more than 90 per cent will pay by bank transfer.
Carleton University’s director of finance Tim Sullivan said the cost of service fees was too expensive to justify the minimal convenience credit cards offer.
“If everybody paid by credit card at Carleton, we would lose somewhere between $2.5 and $3.5 million,” he said. “I can’t imagine having 30-40 fewer professors just (for the) convenience of having credit cards.”
Due to the high number of continuing and part-time students at Algonquin College, it does accept credit cards and currently have no plans to phase them out.
