St Petersburg University rolls out all-in-one payment gateway

This service is currently in test mode.  It is available on our site, where it is broken down into seven categories:

• accommodation in St Petersburg University residence halls
• supplementary services in University residence halls
• payment for hookup services (Internet)
• participation in events (forums, conferences)
• The M. Gorky Scientific Library of St Petersburg University
• The St Petersburg University Centre for Expert Advice
• St Petersburg University Horizon Resort

To pay for accommodation, it is necessary for students to first login to their personal account, using their University user account number.  The payment will be credited to their account instantaneously, though it may take up to three working days for it to be reflected in their balance.  Students can also pay online for the use of launderettes, the fitness centre and the billiard saloon in their residence hall and for the hire of household appliances, sports equipment and much more.

To pay for your housing in a hall of residence, there is no longer any need to refer to an invoice number.  The system itself will find the appropriate document.  This used to be a problem, since receipts got lost and there were often typographical errors on them. 

Dmitry Shishmakov, Advisor to the Rector

“When ordering domestic services on campus, an invoice is likewise no longer called for,” explains Dmitry Shishmakov, Advisor to the Rector.  “This simplifies the process and speeds it up significantly.  Before this service became available, it was necessary to get a general invoice form, fill it out with all the particulars, pay, and then return to the place where the service would be provided.  As a result, everybody suffered:  the provider of the service, who had to make out an invoice and then enter this information into their books, and the students.  Now it is all computerised, and nobody wastes any time on bureaucracy, neither the staff members of the University nor the students.” 

This new service will prove to be handy not only for undergraduate and post-graduate students.  It will also help scholars and researchers from St Petersburg University and from other Russian and foreign universities and research centres to make payments for participation in scholarly activities, seminars, conferences and workshops.  Payment receipts are sent back by email.

The new service will allow users of the M. Gorky Scientific Library of SPbU to quickly pay for a subject search in the electronic catalogue, the compilation and dispatch by email of a list of publications, and the provision of documents from the library collection, including rare documents and manuscripts, for perusal in the reading room.  Here too, once they have made a reservation, students will be able to pay for a stay at Horizon, a University resort on the Black Sea.  Entrepreneurs, governmental authorities and corporate executives will welcome the possibility of paying for the services of the University’s Centre for Expert Advice.  During the first half of June, it will also become possible to use this service to pay for all the programmes in continuing education, which currently number more than 800.

A reminder:  when making a payment through the University’s payment gateway, you will be charged a fee of 0.5% of the total amount of the payment if you use a Petersburg Social Commercial Bank card, and 2% if you use any other bank card.

The service operates successfully on the international scale. Payments from 37 countries are registered in the system. Among the most actively involved are: Belarus, the USA, Germany, Hungary, Czech Republic, France, Switzerland and Italy. One may deposit any amount from any country thanks to the arrangement with the bank.

According to the Advisor to the Rector of St Petersburg University Dmitry Shishmakov, nowadays there is no similar equivalent to the service in Russia. The University’s payment gateway allows to accept payments both in pay.spbu.ru and in other features. For example, the SPbU publishing house has its own online book shop, however technically all the payments are processed in pay.spbu.ru and users are unaware of that. Thus, the statistics is gathered across SPbU and its departments don't have to make the separate contracts with banks and spend time to agree the legal specifications.

And the fact that the University accumulates revenue in one place in the future will provide an opportunity to negotiate better conditions with the partner banks.

Currently the Information Technology Service of St Petersburg University is developing a software solution that will allow to log into your personal account via one of the University’s portals and at the same time log into all others. After its implementation the students will not have to enter the same data each time to use the services - the system itself will recognize users. The ability to pay for services through the payment service directly in the student's personal account will be an additional advantage.