The preferred method of payment for tuition fees is via eTransfer / Interac. This method is quite safe since the transfer is immediate, goes directly into the OSTS account, and eliminates any potential of your cheque getting lost or misdirected.

Almost every bank in Canada offers eTransfers. Many offer it free of charge, while others charge a nominal fee typically ranging from $0.50 to $1.00.

Below are a series of screen captures showing the process of adding OSTS as a payee, and then making the actual transfer of fees. The two key steps in the whole process are:

1. specifying the correct email address, which is tuitionfees@osts.ca
2. ensuring you provide a memo indicating for whom the payment is made

You can rest assured in the safety and reliability of this process: It will become obvious if the email address is accidentally misspelled since the OSTS information won't be shown (as pictured below).

These images are an actual sample of making a payment through TD-CanadaTrust. Other banks will have a similar (though possibly not identical) process.

1. The first screen shows that the Interac eTransfer process is often accessed via a menu of selections on the left side of the screen.

2. If this is the first time you use eTransfer to pay your tuition fee, you'll need to set up OSTS as a recipient for payments. If you've paid this way previously, you get to skip down to step 5!

3. This is where you need to carefully enter the email address for tuition fees. Again, the indication that you've correctly entered the address is that you will not be asked to create a question + answer for the recipient. OSTS is already pre-registered for eTransfers, so no question + answer is necessary. (Tangerine bank is an exception; you may still be required to enter the question at this stage.)

4. You may be able to choose to go directly to the screen for the payment amount, as below. Alternatively, your bank may send you to a screen that looks very much like picture 2. From there you should now be able to choose OSTS as the recipient.

5. At this point, you enter the amount and in the message box, the first and last name of the student for this payment. This ensures our treasurer knows who is paid up!
Don't worry - before the payment is actually sent, you still get to confirm everything in the next step!

6. This step is simply allows you to confirm all the details. Once you're satisfied that all the information is correct, please proceed to send the payment.

7. This is an example of a confirmation screen showing that the payment was successfully completed. If you're a firm believer in Murphy's Law, you can certainly make a hard-copy printout of this screen and keep it for your records.