How Sidra Academy Went Live on XPay in One Week to Collect International Tuition

An online Quran and Arabic-language academy moves off Western Union and PayPal to accept payments globally, in days, not months.

At a glance: 1 week From signup to first live transaction · 5 / 5 Customer support rating · AUD + AED Multi-currency live for international students

The challenge

Before XPay, Sidra Academy relied on Western Union and occasional PayPal transfers to collect tuition from international students. The process was slow, manual, and limited the academy's ability to plan around predictable revenue. Without a way to accept online payments easily, scaling the academy felt like a logistics problem rather than a product one.

The solution

Sidra Academy went live on XPay's payment gateway in roughly a week, using Payment Links to collect tuition without a complex storefront or developer team. XPay's customer success team walked the founder through the platform end to end, and proactively flagged a moment when she was about to process a transaction in AUD instead of AED, catching it before it happened.

The results

With XPay handling collections, the team shifted focus from operational worry to growth, confident that revenue would arrive regardless of where the student was based. Sidra Academy now accepts payments from anywhere in the world within minutes, with full visibility into every transaction, currency, and failure reason inside the dashboard.

Payments stopped being the constraint

The biggest unlock wasn't a feature, it was mental space. Once the founder trusted that money would arrive reliably, the academy could plan curriculum, hire teachers, and expand into new geographies without worrying about how to get paid.

"You can receive your money from anywhere in the world within a minute, safely, quickly, and comfortably for the customer paying in their own currency."

Founder, Sidra Academy