I'm an American mailing my student visa application to study in Switzerland. Got a couple of questions about fees.

1) "An additional postage fee of USD 8.00 is required for a long stay visa application (work, student, residence), which has to be submitted to the responsible authorities in Switzerland." What does this mean?

2) Is it possible to pay this and/or the main fee of $87 by some means other than money order when mailing the application? I read the website but it wasn't 100% clear.

Thanks!

Found some information (on a facebook thread of all places) saying that I should money order the additional fee alongside the main fee, same address. Anyone know if this be a single money order or should it be two separate ones?

It may depend on the consulate that you are submitting to. My consulate (San Francisco) said that they would accept money order or cash - I didn't feel comfortable sending cash, so bought two separate money orders - one for the visa fee and one for the mail back (they charged me $20 for the mailback though!). I bet that I could have done one money order, but I didn't feel like risking anything, since we were under a time crunch. I got the money orders from the US Post Office, which charged something like $1.50 per order.