Getting your first student finance payment
Expecting your first student finance payment? We’ve got you covered!
Applies to England
If you’re starting or returning to a course soon, you’ll be looking forward to your first student finance payment. You can check your payment schedule and status by signing in to your online account.
Follow our 3 easy steps to help you get paid on time:
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Make sure you’ve submitted your application and given us any evidence we need. Sign in to your online account and check your application tracker in case you still have anything to do.
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Check your bank details are correct in your online account. To do this, select ‘Your personal details’ in your account. If you need to update them, make sure to do this at least 4 working days before your payment date.
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Register/enrol on your course. You might be able to do this online through your university or college’s website. We can’t make payments to you until your university or college confirm that you’ve registered/enrolled. You’ll be invited to do this by your university or college closer to your course start date.
If you’re a part-time or distance learning student and you’re getting a Maintenance Loan, your course provider will typically confirm your registration 2 weeks after the start of your course. Your payment schedule won’t update until you’ve attended your course for 2 weeks and we’ve got confirmation of your registration/enrolment from your course provider.
Where to find your payment status
To get ready for your next payment, you should check your payment status in case there’s anything you still need to do before you get paid. It’s easy to check your payment status, just follow these steps:
- Sign in to your online account at www.gov.uk/student-finance-register-login.
- Select ‘Undergraduate student finance applications’.
- Select the application for the payments you wish to check.
- Under the heading ‘Manage your student finance’, select ‘View your payments’.
What your payment status means
Check what your payment status means in the table below:
| Payment status | What this means for you |
|---|---|
| Checking details | We need to check your National Insurance number before we can pay you. Go to ‘Your actions to complete’ to enter it. |
| Scheduled | We’ve scheduled your payments. Before we can pay you, your university or college will need to tell us that you’ve registered/enrolled with them. They’ll do this when you start your course. |
| Awaiting confirmation | Your university or college need to tell us that you’ve registered/enrolled on your course. They’ll do this when you start your course. We’ll pay you after we get this. |
| Ready to be paid | We don’t need anything else from you. Your payment will be made on the date shown. |
| Payment in progress | Your payment is on its way. It can take up to three working days for it to appear in your bank account. |
| Paid | We’ve made a payment to your bank account. |
| Blocked | We can’t pay you. You should already know about this. If you don’t, we have different ways to contact us. |
| Failed | Your payment has been returned to us. Go to ‘Your personal details’ to check your bank details. |
Checking if we’ve got confirmation of your registration/enrolment
You don’t need to call us to check, the quickest and easiest way to find out if we’ve got confirmation of your registration/enrolment is by checking your application status and payment status.
Use the table below to understand what each status means:
| Application status | Payment status | What this means |
|---|---|---|
| Confirming all details | Awaiting confirmation | We’ve not had confirmation of your registration |
| Receiving payments | Ready to be paid | We’ve had confirmation of your registration |
If your university or college have told you they’ve sent confirmation of registration/enrolment to us, you should allow time for the status in your online account to be updated as this can take up to 48 hours. We’ll send you a text when your payment is on its way to your bank account.
Visit our application status page for more information on what your status means.
If you’re getting less student finance than you expected
If you’ve applied late or haven’t given us the household income details we need yet, you may get a smaller amount of student finance to begin with. This is to make sure you have some money in time for starting your course.
Once we’ve got your household income details and processed them, we’ll adjust how much you’ll get and send you a top up payment as soon as we can.
Visit our campaign page for a whole range of student finance information, and follow us on:
Updates to this page
Last updated 10 November 2023 + show all updates
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Removed 'withdrawn' and 'suspended' payment statuses as these are no longer live.
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Added additional payment statuses and updated section 'what this means for you'.
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Included payment information for part-time and distance learning students.
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YouTube film has been added to the page
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Guidance has been updated to reflect changes to online accounts ahead of the 2022/23 academic year
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Updated guidance on what the payment status 'awaiting confirmation' means.
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Updated embedded films to the latest versions.
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Embedded a second guidance film, "How to view your payment dates and status".
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First published.