Paying mission fees: money orders and why cards often fail

More applications are returned over payment than over any part of the substance of the case. Not because the amount was wrong — usually because the instrument was wrong, or the payee name was not exactly what the mission asked for.

The short answer

• The current fee schedule is published by your mission — check it before you send payment, as it changes. The one figure we state on this site is the $88 NVR application fee; everything else comes from the mission.
• Assume a money order until told otherwise. Personal cheques and ordinary card payments are frequently not accepted at missions.
• The payee name must be exactly as published. Not a paraphrase, not an abbreviation, not last year’s wording.
• Never send cash. There is no way to prove it arrived and no way to recover it.
• Keep the receipt or stub. It is your only evidence and your only route to a refund or a trace.

Why cards are often not accepted

It is worth understanding the reason, because it explains why this is unlikely to change soon and why arguing about it at a counter goes nowhere.

Card acceptance requires a merchant relationship, and card payments can be charged back weeks after the fact — which is awkward for an office issuing a document immediately on payment. A money order or a bank draft, by contrast, is prepaid: the funds have already left the payer, the instrument is drawn on an institution rather than on a personal account, and it cannot bounce the way a personal cheque can. For an office processing documents that cannot easily be unissued, that certainty is the whole point.

Some missions do accept cards for some services. That is a per-mission fact, and it is on their fee page, not here.

Getting a money order right

In the United States, money orders are sold at post offices, banks and many retailers; a bank cashier’s cheque serves a similar purpose. Whichever you use:

1. Confirm the exact amount against the mission’s current fee page on the day you buy it. If you are applying for more than one service, ask whether they want one instrument or several — some missions require a separate payment per service or per applicant.
2. Write the payee exactly as published. Copy it character by character from the mission’s own page. This is the single most common failure.
3. Fill in the purchaser section with your own name and address. A blank money order is a bearer instrument, which is to say it is cash.
4. Do not staple it to anything or write on it beyond the required fields. Defaced instruments get refused.
5. Photograph it before you post it, front and back, and keep the receipt stub separately from the envelope.

If a mission asks for a bank draft rather than a retail money order, they mean a different instrument and your bank will know the difference. Ask the teller for what the mission named.

Posting payment safely

Send anything containing payment and a passport by a trackable service, and keep the tracking number with your copy of the file. If you are including a prepaid return envelope — many missions require one — buy it with tracking too, and note that number as well. When a follow-up is needed, the difference between a productive conversation and a frustrating one is being able to say exactly what was sent, when it was delivered and to whom.

If something goes wrong

• The application comes back over payment. Read the reason, correct the instrument, resubmit. Do not send a second payment on top of the first without establishing what happened to the first.
• The fee changed between purchase and receipt. Ask what the mission requires — usually a supplementary payment rather than a fresh one.
• The money order is lost in transit. Take the stub to the issuer and start a trace. This is why you kept it.

Related

• E-passport renewal from the USA
• NVR explained — the $88 fee and the mandatory visa.gov.bd form
• Washington DC, New York, Los Angeles, United Kingdom

What we could not verify

• Current fee amounts for any service other than the $88 NVR application fee.
• The exact payee name required by any mission.
• Which missions accept cards, and for which services.
• Whether one combined payment or separate payments per service or per applicant is required.
• Whether a prepaid return envelope is required, and of what type.
• Payment methods for UK applicants, which will differ from the US pattern.

All of it is published on each mission’s own fee page. Check it on the day you pay, not the week before.