The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has begun testing a token-based payment system aimed at preventing students from paying school fees twice.
NELFUND Managing Director, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this on Wednesday during a news briefing, saying the system would allow students to authorise payments directly to their institutions using tokens linked to their schools.
He said the system was designed to address cases in which students paid their fees without knowing that NELFUND had already settled the bills.
According to Sawyerr, delays in notifying students about completed payments had led to duplicate payments and requests for refunds.
He gave an example of an institution receiving payment from NELFUND on a Monday, while a student who was unaware of the transaction paid the same fees by Wednesday and only discovered the earlier payment on Friday.
“It was a genuine error, no suspicion, no accusation, just genuine error,” he said.
Under the proposed system, students would receive notifications when their approved fees were ready for payment. They could then authorise the transaction through an application on their phones, with the money transferred directly to their institutions.
“We want to eliminate that need for refunds. So we’re placing the power of payment in the hands of the students,” Sawyerr said.
He explained that the system would not transfer institutional loan funds into students’ personal bank accounts. Instead, each token would restrict payment to the institution for which the funds had been approved.
“If they don’t push the button, the money doesn’t go anywhere. It will never be able to be transferred to the personal account of the student or anybody else,” he said.
NELFUND Executive Director, Mustapha Iyal, said the token would be linked to a specific institution and could not be used to transfer funds to another school or a personal account.
Iyal also disclosed that NELFUND had received close to 400,000 applications at the time of the briefing. However, he did not say how many applications had been processed under the pilot scheme.
NELFUND administers the Federal Government’s student loan programme, established under the Students Loans (Access to Higher Education) Act, 2024. The scheme provides eligible students with interest-free loans to cover institutional charges and, where requested and approved, upkeep expenses.
Under the existing arrangement, approved institutional fees are paid directly to schools, while upkeep allowances are transferred to beneficiaries’ bank accounts. The proposed token system focuses on payments to institutions.
The officials did not announce a date for full implementation of the new system.
By News Scope Africa
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