Online and Onsite School Fee Payment Patterns Among Basic Education Students

Abstract

The expansion of digital payment technologies has created new mechanisms for collecting school fees, yet conventional on-site payment continued to operate alongside online and off-site alternatives. This study examined differences in school-fee payment activity between these two channels among basic education students in an educational institution in Cebu City, Philippines. Using a quantitative retrospective comparative design, the study analyzed institutional administrative records covering elementary, junior high school, and senior high school payment activity. The analysis focused on transaction frequency and monetary amount and examined differences and associations between on-site and online/off-site payment channels. The findings showed that on-site payment remained the more extensively utilized channel in terms of both transaction frequency and monetary value. The analysis also revealed positive relationships between payment frequency and monetary amount within each channel, alongside inverse relationships between the utilization patterns of the two channels. These findings demonstrated that the emergence of digital payment had not resulted in the disappearance of conventional school-fee payment within the institutional context. Rather, on-site and online/off-site channels continued to coexist, with on-site payment retaining an important role in school-fee collection. The study contributed to research on educational payment systems by providing evidence from actual administrative payment records, complementing the predominantly adoption-, acceptance-, and intention-oriented literature on digital payment. The findings also highlighted the practical relevance of maintaining accessible and complementary channels for school-fee collection.