Paying US Student Loans from the UK

For the past two years, I have been sending my student loan money via paypal to my parents and having them pay my student loans for me. Well, they are screwing it up lately by forgetting to make the payments, or not contacting me if they experience trouble logging in.

I can't risk this happening any month any longer, and I don't have a US bank account anymore. I tried opening one when I went back to the US, but due to fraudulent activity on my account from ebay 2 years ago, they wrongly blacklisted me for 7 years (yes, I argued the matter and I do believe they took me off this blacklist, but I'm in the UK and won't be back in the States for some time).

I cannot set up my UK banking details on their sites, they only accept US accounts. Is there any other way I can do it without having to pay the bank extortionate amounts of money to send abroad each month ?!?!

Help! 

Did you ever get a response to this? Do you know what happened? I will be in the same situation very soon...

You can set yourself up with a UK paypal account with your UK bank details as well as a US paypal account with your US bank details.  Then you can send the money to yourself, from your UK to your US account and pay the loans that way.  

Some people also use XE, although I'm not familiar with how it works.  Similarly, I'd imagine.

I  know this is a late response to this and I hope you have resolved this issue by now!  But I would like to add that I pay my Sallie Mae loans in the US with my Nat West debit card from here in the UK... I do it all over the phone and have never had any issues.  Much easier!  Plus, you can possibly set up direct debits online yourself (with a UK debit card) with the company who you have to pay the loan money to.  Hope this helps anyone else who comes across this, I imagine this is a common issue because at first I didn't know what I was going to either, I didn't think they would accept a foreign card but I guess they really want their money back!

I  know this is a late response to this and I hope you have resolved this issue by now!  But I would like to add that I pay my Sallie Mae loans in the US with my Nat West debit card from here in the UK... I do it all over the phone and have never had any issues.  Much easier!  Plus, you can possibly set up direct debits online yourself (with a UK debit card) with the company who you have to pay the loan money to.  Hope this helps anyone else who comes across this, I imagine this is a common issue because at first I didn't know what I was going to either, I didn't think they would accept a foreign card but I guess they really want their money back!

Thanks for the information. I will be in a similar situation when I move to the UK in 2012.  I will have students loan to pay and have been trying to figure out how I was going to pay them. 

I have my loan with Edfinancial and called to see what my options were for paying it from here to there. I don't have a US bank account anymore (they closed it for me due to inactivity, made me so angry, but thats another story!). I was told that international money order was the only way they would accept it, so I'm going to try it out this month! 

Plus, you can possibly set up direct debits online yourself (with a UK debit card) with the company who you have to pay the loan money to.  Hope this helps anyone else who comes across this, I imagine this is a common issue because at first I didn't know what I was going to either, I didn't think they would accept a foreign card but I guess they really want their money back!

This is totally possible.  I pay a set amount on my US loans every month - it is direct debited from my husband's RBS account.  I didn't use the website to set it up though, I just called them and set it up.  I would call them to ask, if you haven't already figured out another way to do it.

I have some school loans and hwen I mentioned I was moving over seas in a year or two the woman told me they could issue me a 'debit' card per say that I could money the money and they would autmoaticlaly draft it out.

This is totally possible.  I pay a set amount on my US loans every month - it is direct debited from my husband's RBS account.  I didn't use the website to set it up though, I just called them and set it up.  I would call them to ask, if you haven't already figured out another way to do it.

Hi, I'm going to have to setup a similar direct debit soon.  When you say you phoned them, do you mean RBS or the lender?  Thanks!

Eek, sorry, here's a reply 3 months too late!  I get on here so infrequently.  Umm, I called the lender to set it up, and just gave them the bank details.  I don't even know how they managed it.  Buuuut....I think it may not actually work for most people.  I just called DofE last month to see why they sent me a bill when I'm in school, and they said I can't pay them by D/D, I have to call and pay every month by card.  Apparently I was paying a collection agency before, because my loan was in default.  So only that particular collection agency accepted the D/Ds.  And I never did understand why I'm still paying a monthly payment when I'm a full-time student.  But I didn't bother to argue with the guy - as long as they pay for my college tuition I don't care.