With the development of electronic commerce, the payment problem is restricting electronic commerce. Especially the security of payments. Electronic payment constitutes the core link of e-commerce. In China of today, market transactions are only completed through electronic payment platforms. Electronic payment has been integrated into every aspect of Chinese life.
With the development of the economy and technology, an increasing number of Chinese students are studying outside China. Schools with strong global educational strength mainly gather in the United States, Europe, and other places, so more people choose schools in the United States and the United Kingdom for better educational resources. According to statistics, the number of Chinese students studying abroad increased year after year from 2013 to 2019. In 2018, 662,000 Chinese students studied abroad, up 8.9% from the previous year. There were 30,200 government-funded students and 596,300 students who paid their own way to study abroad. By 2019, the number of Chinese students studying abroad had reached 700,000, and the market for students studying abroad continues to expand. According to the White Paper on Chinese Students Studying Abroad 2020, there are around 890,000 Chinese students studying abroad.
As technology advances, third-party payments have become popular in China, and they are impacting how people pay. With a reality that the number of Chinese students studying abroad is increasing, the majority of students and families studying outside of China are experiencing difficulties in paying their tuition fees. Customers want an easy payment method to solve this problem and thus facilitate the payment of tuition fees. For that, EasyTransfer is devoted into solving such remittance issue.
EasyTransfer is a third-party online electronic payment platform for overseas study. The key customer group of the company is the Chinese students studying overseas and their families, by providng them the overseas study payment services. They have increased the specialization of online payments and have made a great improvement on the experience of their customers. Through the cooperations with universities in the United States, Britain, Spain, and other countries, EasyTransfer provides professional and personalized services to help customers to use its payment channel with confidence.
Since its inception in 2013, EasyTransfer online tuition payment platform has matured and its transaction volume has exceeded RMB 20 billion. In the education sector, EasyTransfer has established deep strategic cooperation with over 300 study abroad institutions, agents or international schools in China, including famous institutions such as New Oriental Education, Tiandao Education, Xintong Education and so on. In the field of school cooperation, EasyTransfer has covered 90% of the school associations in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and has strategic cooperation with 17 mainstream banks and 5 third-party payment companies with cross-border payment licenses in China.
According to the research of this thesis paper, it is concluded that if EasyTransfer aims to increase its market share, they are recommended to partner with other influential platforms and offer free payment campaign. For instance, offer free handling fee for newcomers on their first use. It is also important for EasyTransfer to work with well-known KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) to get them to review the service on their social media, in order to build its brand image.
