The first version shipped with online payments on by default
It was 2024. Every SaaS product in India had a Razorpay integration. We assumed school fee collection would follow the same pattern.
Three schools in, we ran into the first signal: a parent had paid online, the bank confirmed the transaction, but the school's fee counter didn't see the reconciliation for 48 hours. When the parent came to collect a receipt, the counter staff — looking at their manual register — asked for proof of payment. The parent showed their UPI screenshot. The counter staff had no way to verify it independently. The school's trust in the digital record was zero.
The actual problem
Indian school fee collection is highly trust-sensitive. The person at the counter — usually a dedicated accountant — is the single source of truth. Any digital system that bypasses them, even partially, creates accountability gaps that the school's management cannot tolerate.
Online payments work in schools where the counter staff has been trained to treat the digital ledger as authoritative. In our experience, that training takes a semester, not a weekend.
What we ship instead
The default configuration tracks all fees in AiraNexus with manual collection at the counter. The ERP handles the ledger, receipts, and reporting. The accountant remains the point of control.
Online payment (via Razorpay, UPI direct, or PayU) is an add-on configuration that schools enable when they're ready — after their counter staff has been using the system for at least one full term.
This means: schools that enable online payments do so with trust already established. Adoption rates for those schools are higher, and dispute rates are near zero.
What about parent convenience?
We push fee reminders via push and WhatsApp. The reminder includes the exact outstanding amount and can include a payment link if online payments are enabled. For schools that haven't enabled online payments, the reminder links to a contact the school for payment message.
Not ideal. But more honest than shipping a payment feature that creates accountability confusion at the school level.