CR80News Fall 2015

CR80News ID TECHNOLOGIES IN EDUCATION ID TECHNOLOGIES IN EDUCATION FALL 2015 - ISSUE 20 FALL 2015 - ISSUE 20

RE-EVALUATING

REVALUE +

KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL MASS RE-CARDING

Exploring costs and benefits of online revalue MOBILE ORDERING EXPANDS CAMPUS versus old school value transfer stations DINING POSITIONING YOUR PROGRAM FOR MORE FUNDING

Turn-Key Managed Services With the campus card industry’s most-experienced team, value-added, professionallymanaged services eliminate the need for dedicated or shared resources for system and database administration, technical support, and most campus credential program operations.

Integrated Card Production and Encoding Integrate your card production with ISO number generator, inline encoding, multiple card types support, and much more.

BENE

SaaS Deploym Anytime, Anywhere Cloud-Based Reporting

Custom Marketing Solutions Increase awareness and promote usage of your campus card program with proven campaign strategy, design, and execution.

Choose full campaign execution, select services a la carte, or request custom pieces to suit specific needs.

Turn-Key M

Off-Campus Program and Services Expand your card program off campus. Add significant value to your card program without impact to on-campus systems or staff. Includes full merchant support, merchant promotional campaigns, and Campus Cash®.

Upfront & Recurring Cost Savings

Cardholder Care

Quick & Simple Deployment

Offer comprehensive cardholder support via a toll-free help desk for students and parents private-labeled for your program, but staffed and managed in-house at our Operations Center.

ALL PART OF A UNIFIED CREDENTIAL S Financial Solutions • Distribute financial aid quickly and securely • Grant students easy access to financial disbursements • Allow students to make transactions wherever MasterCard® is accepted

Off-Campus Solutions • Allow students to make cashless purchases off campus within a university-approved merchant network

Security Solutio

• Enhance campus with real-time aw and intelligence • Fully integrate vid surveillance • Manage door access privileges

EFITS

ment

Managed Services

Flexible Accounts Configuration

For a quick and simple way to deploy your campus card system, Comprehensive Monitoring & Support

SOLUTION

ons

safety wareness

deo

Transaction Solutions • Make student purchases quick and simple • Create a cashless campus • Improve verification and authorization of access and tracking of attendance for classes, events, and activities

take the SaaS path.

Simplify the deployment and management of your campus credential solution.

With a turn-key SaaS campus credential transaction solution from Blackboard Transact, rely on trusted professionals to manage your system, get up and running quickly, enjoy upfront and recurring cost savings, and spend more of your time doing what really counts—serving your students.

Copyright © 2015. Blackboard Inc. All rights reserved.

Learn the Top 5 Benefits of a SaaS-Deployed Campus ID Credential Solution.

Read the white paper at blackboard.com/transact/saaspath Get your cube maze puzzle when you visit booth 223 at NACAS.

Make sure every visitor is a welcomed one.

HID Global Secure Visitor Management solutions track your guests and protect your facility.

Upgrade from unsecured paper guest books to the robust security of our EasyLobby® Secure Visitor Management solution. With EasyLobby, you can identify who is in your facility and why, control access to secured areas, screen against unwanted guests and more. Just scan each visitor’s ID and print a customized badge in seconds. And it’s scalable, so you’ll get the protection you need as your company grows.

Request a free web demo at hidglobal.com/welcomed-cr80 © 2014 HID Global Corporation/ASSA ABLOY AB. All rights reserved. HID, HID Global, the HID Blue Brick logo, the Chain Design, and EasyLobby are trademarks or registered trademarks of HID Global or its licensor(s)/supplier(s) in the US and other countries and may not be used without permission.

Text it.

Tap it.

Launch it.

OMG.

Take your campus card program mobile with CBORD®.

• Access • Spending • Online Ordering • Account Management • Attendance Monitoring • And More!

CBORD 61 Brown Road Ithaca, NY 14850 607.257.2410 www.cbord.com

CONTENTS

CONTENTS 6 Editorial: Making cents of card revalue 8 ID Shorts News and posts from CR80News.com

32 From the Director’s chair: Positioning your card program for success … and funding

12 Re-evaluating revalue 18 Re-carding a campus What to consider when mass issuance is in the cards 20 Considerations for mass (RE) issuance of campus IDs

WILL BITCOIN MAKE THE GRADE ON 26 CAMPUS?

24 Disaster recovery for card programs Prep work and communication can minimize damage 26 Will Bitcoin make the grade on campus?

Georgia Tech adopts the digital currency for reloading campus card funds

INDEX OF ADVERTISERS 2-3 Blackboard transact.blackboard.com/SaaSDeployment

43 CBORD www.cbord.com

11 ColorID www.ColorID.com

CONSIDERATIONS FOR MASS (RE) ISSUANCE OF CAMPUS IDS

20

23 Entrust Datacard www.datacard.com/CR80

7 Evolis www.evolis.com

27 Heartland www.1card.com

44 HID Global www.hidglobal.com/welcomed-cr80

9

Identification Systems Group

www.IdentificationSystemsGroup.com

37 MyPhoto www.studentidphoto.com

29 NACAS www.nacas.org/annualconference

41 NACCU www.naccu.org

5

SARGENT

www.personacampus.com

15 Wells Fargo www.wellsfargo.com

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MOBILE FOOD ORDERING EXTENDS REACH OF CAMPUS DINING SERVICES

38

30 Smart cards pass the test in Nigeria HID commissioned to provide secure issuance, verification solution for students

34 Catholic high school deploys facial recognition for access control 36 Open-loop payments gain ground on campus As more students tote plastic, institutions grapple with convenience versus costs 38 Mobile food ordering extends reach of campus dining services

Struggling with the transition to new credentials?

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Easy, affordable migration from mag stripe cards to smart cards and mobile access With PERSONA Campus™ access control solutions, you can: – Support mag stripe and contactless credentials, as well as HID Mobile Access® powered by Seos® – Transition mixed credential populations to a single credential as budget allows – Build in the flexibility to support emerging technologies such as mobile access PERSONA Campus™ solutions combine advanced, flexible software with a variety of offline, Power over Ethernet (PoE) and WiFi locks for customized access control that integrates seamlessly with other campus systems.

Learn how MAGRATION™ can help solve your campus security challenges: www.personacampus.com

Available from ASSA ABLOY Group brands: CORBIN RUSSWIN | SARGENT Scan this QR code using your mobile phone to learn more.

Copyright © 2015 ASSA ABLOY Inc. All rights reserved.

ABOUT

CR80News

PERSPECTIVE

Making cents of card revalue ANDREW HUDSON, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, AVISIAN PUBLICATIONS

EXECUTIVE EDITOR & PUBLISHER Chris Corum, chris@AVISIAN.com EDITOR Zack Martin, zack@AVISIAN.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Andrew Hudson, andrew@AVISIAN.com CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Liset Cruz, Autumn Cafiero Giusti, Gina Jordan ART DIRECTOR Ryan Kline ADVERTISING SALES Chris Corum, chris@AVISIAN.com Sales Department, advertise@AVISIAN.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS CR80News is free to qualified professionals in the U.S. For those who do not qualify for a free subscription, the annual rate is US$29 ($59 outside the U.S.). Visit http://store.avisian.com for subscription information. No subscription agency is authorized to solicit or take orders for subscriptions. Postmaster: Send address changes to AVISIAN Inc., 315 E. Georgia Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32301.

ABOUT CR80News CR80News is published twice a year by AVISIAN Inc., 315 E. Georgia Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32301. Chris Corum, President and CEO. Circulation records are maintained at AVISIAN Inc., 315 E. Georgia Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32301.

Copyright 2015 by AVISIAN Inc. All material contained herein is protected by copyright laws and owned by AVISIAN Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. The inclusion or exclusion of any does not mean that the publisher advocates or rejects its use. While considerable care is taken in the production of this and all issues, no responsibility can be accepted for any errors or omissions, unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, artwork, etc.

AVISIAN Inc. is not liable for the content or representations in submitted advertisements or for transcription or reproduction errors.

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Submissions for positions on our editorial advisory board will be accepted by email only. Please send your qualifications to info@ AVISIAN.com

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There are certain programs on campus that offer such valuable services to the university community that they simply have to be made available. Like water and electricity, they are vital to the day-to-day campus life.

On many campuses, the transaction system is just such a service. It facilitates payments across auxiliaries, administration and even academic departments. While traditional payment cards are often also accepted where large-volume transactions are necessary, there are crucial areas where campus card payments continue to be the only viable option.

Our cover story explores the methods available to revalue this public utility known as the campus card. The progression has gone from in-office deposits to metal boxes bolted to campus walls and most recently to online revalue solutions. The benefits and shortcomings of each revalue method are clear, but the elusive element is how much each method ends up costing a campus card office.

Across numerous interviews for this story it became clear that there are wide discrepancies in the way programs account for costs with the revalue options. This is understandable as it isn’t exactly a straightforward calculation. But without this insight, a card program could be the victim of its own success, bringing in more cash but falling further into the red.

Accepting debit or credit cards for revaluing a campus card account incurs a pertransaction fee, just as accepting open-loop Visa or MasterCard does in retail or dining operations. These fees exist whether they are used in-person, at a value transfer station or online. But following a move to online revalue, campuses commonly report that debit and credit cards account for 80% or more of total revalue dollars.

For easy math, let’s assume a campus incurs a 3.5% fee between transaction fees and system licenses for online revalue. Students love the added convenience and deposits soar to $500,000 in year one. Good news is the growth; bad news is the program incurred $17,500 in new fees. And this expense will continue to rise as card use grows.

When it comes to funding, campus card offices can be institutionally funded or self-supporting. Those that are institutionally funded are viewed by administration as one of those required public utilities. In such cases, transactions system growth and the associated expenses are seen as a further benefit to the campus-wide community.

Those that are self-supporting need to generate sufficient revenues to cover operational costs. For such programs, increasing expenses must be offset with adding fees – such as transaction fees assessed to on and off campus points of sale or fees charged to students and other cardholders using online revalue.

Some consider charging transaction fees to other on-campus entities akin to taking money out of one pocket and putting it in another. I’d say that’s okay as long as it is not the card program pocket constantly being emptied.

Self-funded programs, can’t afford to do ‘”charity work” on behalf of their colleagues.

In the case of an institutionally funded program, however, it could be understood that operations will run in the red.

In either case, when it comes time for end of year reviews, losing money isn’t looked upon favorably. So it’s important to understand the true cost of revalue, as well as make it known to decision makers that operating in the red doesn’t mean the program is broken. It may simply be doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.

HOW DOES YOUR SCHOOL IDENTIFY ITS STUDENTS?

By providing student badges instantly with an Evolis card printer From basic identity data to the most advanced encoding features, student ID cards are an essential part to securing educational facilities today.

Evolis printers together with cardPresso software offer an easy-to-use and powerful system.

www.evolis.com

ID SHORTS HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WEB

VCU ADDS IRIS BIOMETRICS FOR DINING HALL ACCESS With the help of ColorID, Virginia Commonwealth University is using iris biometrics as an alternative to the existing card swipe method of dining hall entry.

New iris cameras enable meal plan holders to scan their eyes instead of swiping their IDs to access the dining hall. The new, voluntary system serves as an express lane, boosting throughput for students.

“Students won’t need their ID to enter the dining center anymore,” says Stephen

Barr, the director of campus services for VCU Dining Services. “With iris identification, it’s as simple as a camera taking a picture of their eyes and two seconds later they walk through.”

The introduction of biometric access at the dining hall also enables students who lose their IDs over a weekend to still access their meal plans while the campus card office is closed. According to Barr, there isn’t a mechanism for students to get a replacement ID during weekends, which prior to the biometric system would have kept them from accessing the dining hall.

“VCU Dining Services came to us earlier in the year and wanted to give students a better dining experience on campus,” says Mark Degan, corporate marketing manager at ColorID. Food service provider Aramark was also involved as their employees manage the cashier station and will be monitoring the solution on a daily basis, explains Degan. “We worked hand in hand with both departments which allowed us to really get a good idea as to what requirements were needed to make this successful in everyone’s eyes.”

GEORGE WASHINGTON CARDS TO INCLUDE EMERGENCY CONTACTS All new campus cards printed at George Washington will look a little different, in particular, the backs of the IDs. New GWorld cards will carry phone numbers for the University Police Department, emergency services and valuable oncampus resources including medical services, Mental Health Services, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the Sexual Assault Response Consultative Team – a group of trained staff that provide resources and support.

The backs of the previous GWorld cards featured a barcode, the GW logo and the address to the GWorld card office. The university hopes that in printing the emergency phone numbers will

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Safety and Security is our Priority.

Campus Card Systems

Tracking

ID Systems

Contactless Cards

Access Control

Visitor Registration

Emergency Communications

Local Inventory of Supplies

ISG solutions change the campus card world by providing better, more complete choices that are cost effective, including everything that you require, and come with the certified local support you need.

Springheights University

Student

Find an ISG Member near you by calling 888-964-6482 or online at www.IdentificationSystemsGroup.com ISG is a trademark of Identification Systems Group. Names and logos on samples are fictitious. Any similarity to actual names, trademarks or tradenames is coincidental. Specifications subject to change without notice. © 2015 Identification Systems Group. All rights reserved.

help students find resources as quickly as possible if they find themselves in a dangerous situation.

UPENN STUDENTS DONATE MEAL SWIPES TO THE HUNGRY Students at the University of Pennsylvania donated their unused meal swipes to help the surrounding community via the campus’ Swipe Out Hunger Campaign.

As reported by UPenn’s official website, the university presented a check for $7,291.25 to local hunger relief organization Philabundance. The funds were gathered from the some 900 Penn students that participated in the campaign, which was able to amass a total of 1,535 unused meal swipes during its set donation period.

The campaign completed its pilot run during the spring semester, with food service operator Bon Appetit giving Philabundance $4.75 for every unused meal swipe donated by students.

The university specified two donation days, March 25 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and April 28 from 6-8 p.m., during which students could donate up to two meal swipes.

Organizers hope to expand the program and perhaps even spread the network to other universities.

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BLACKBOARD, NXP ECLIPSE 1 MILLION NFC CARDS SHIPPED Blackboard and NXP Semiconductors surpassed the one million mark on NFC-compatible campus cards shipped since 2012. The credentials have shipped nationwide to destinations including UCLA, Quinnipiac University, Liberty University, University of Oklahoma and Central Michigan University.

“We wanted to choose a path that would allow us to deliver enhanced student services in a highly-secure manner,” says Deb Nightingale, Liberty University Card Director. “We know that going forward, students won’t want to carry a card, so we are strategically moving toward a mobile credential and becoming NFC-capable sets us up for that nicely.”

“Native NFC unlocks a world of ubiquitous possibilities for all Blackboard Transact enabled campuses, regardless of form factor be it card, wrist band, watch, mobile phone or tablet,” says David Marr, SVP of Blackboard Transact.

HUMBER COLLEGE STUDENTS PAY WITH A SELFIE A recently launched mobile app enables students to verify payments with a selfie.

The “Pay With Your Selfie,” concept le-

verages Bluetooth to match the user’s image against a tokenized form of their credit, debit or meal plan card stored on their mobile phone.

Compass Group Canada operates Humber College’s food services, and with the app, has the ability to better understand its students and create promotions and offers catered to those specific needs.

Since the program began, students who have downloaded the app and uploaded their selfie are visiting on average 3 times per week and have doubled their spend in a span in just two months.

“Technology works best when it is hidden and focuses on the human element,” explains Amit Jhas, CEO of Lucova. “Empowering frontline staff with access to real-time and relevant information is the key to unlocking true customer loyalty – and this can be as simple as providing

ID SHORTS

staff the name of the customer who is standing right in front of them.”

CBORD ADDS 25 NEW CAMPUSES TO GET PLATFORM Since the start of 2015, CBORD has added 25 new customers – including Florida International University, University of Oregon, Northern Virginia Community College and Keene State College – to the GET mobile commerce platform.

Designed to be a one-stop shop for the life of a student’s ID, the GET platform

allows a user to add funds to various accounts, check usage of meal plans, investigate where they can spend their funds on- and off-campus, and order food.

“Our customers have been clear: they want united commerce functions that cross all parts of campus,” says Susan Chaffee, director of product development for CBORD. “We’ve been in online ordering and online account management for years, and during this time have come to fully understand how a single touch point for the patron can be a value driver for an entire auxiliary operation.”

Keene State College, one of the newly added GET campus partners, has seen

the benefit of GET’s all-in-one format.

“There is a significant upside to having card office, dining and marketing functionality in one app,” says Rebecca Hunt, marketing manager with dining services at Keene State College. “Ultimately, this streamlines and simplifies our Owl Card Office services and marketing.”

Explore online for up-to-the-minute news and insight on identity and security technologies for the campus and university market. Articles, podcasts and videos are added daily at CR80News.com

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RE-EVALUATING

REVALUE ONLINE

METAL BOX

VS.

$

Online card revalue is becoming the norm, but it carries hefty transaction fees and can leave certain users out in the cold. To combat this, many campuses complement it with old school value transfer stations.

ANDREW HUDSON, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, AVISIAN PUBLICATIONS

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The student ID is a great way to pay for that late night snack or last-minute print job from the computer lab, as long as there are funds in the account. But when it runs dry, there had better be a convenient way to reload.

Reloading funds has traditionally been handled in three different ways: in-person deposits at the card or bursar’s office, unattended deposits at value transfer stations or online transfer via a web revalue service.

Whether you call it value transfer station, an automated deposit machine or something else, the dominant method for loading funds to campus card accounts has been these dedicated machines strategically located around campus. They enable a student to manually insert cash or use a credit or debit card to transfer money to the campus card account.

In recent years, online revalue has taken over providing students, faculty, staff and parents the ability to remotely add money from any Internet-enabled device.

The online method certainly offers greater flexibility and convenience, but does that make it the clear winner?

Or is there still a place for the revalue stations of old?

MACHINES STRIVE TO MAKE THEIR CASE “Value transfer stations absolutely still have a place on campus,” says Kent Pawlak, product strategy director at Blackboard.

He points to students needing a quick influx of funds at a printer station, individuals without a debit or credit card and campus visitors. “Campuses are often closely tied to the community, so guest cards are necessary for library print and copy or purchases at a coffee shop.”

“I would say campuses certainly give pause to whether or not they should replace

an outdated value transfer station with a new model,” says Pawlak. “It’s easier to top off cards online or via a mobile app, but the vast majority of institutions purchase at least one value transfer station.”

Moreover, Pawlak explains that there are still campuses that don’t offer online revalue. “Some campuses prefer the student come into a card office or visit a value transfer station,” he says. “Others keep a transfer station on campus because some people are hesitant to enter credit card or personal information online.”

“Our campuses are still installing revalue stations, so much so that we are releasing our newest generation of the devices,” says Jim Perkins, director of sales for colleges and universities at CBORD. The company’s new Value Plus Reload

Lowell, a Heartland client, revalue machines still play an integral role.

UMass Lowell is a public university with two public access libraries – ideal environments for a revalue station. “Patrons often visit our libraries that do not have a UCard but want the ability to print,” says Jon Victorine, security technology director at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. “To avoid badging visitors that may only come to our libraries once, we deployed a machine in each library so they can purchase a UPrint visitor card and add value to it.”

Another added benefit to the revalue machine is that it provides students with a quick and easy means to add funds when they are running low and needing to print.

UPrint is deployed to 57 printers across

CAMPUSES CERTAINLY GIVE PAUSE TO WHETHER OR NOT THEY SHOULD REPLACE AN OUTDATED VALUE TRANSFER STATION WITH A NEW MODEL Station accepts both cash and credit cards using secure end-to-end encryption, explains Perkins. It has a lockable bill magazine so the person emptying the machine does not have access to the cash.

No matter how you slice it, the trend is certainly moving away from hardware to software, says Fred Emery, director of OneCard sales at Heartland Campus Solutions. “We are seeing a massive shift from deposit machines to web and mobile,” says Emery. “With all of our installs this summer, we do not have one as of yet installing these machines.”

But just because new installations may be focused exclusively online, many mature programs still rely on the hardware option. At the University of Massachusetts

campus, six of which are in libraries. “Revalue stations allows students to load funds onto their UCards in a pinch, although they also get $15 of free printing per semester and can add funds to their cards online,” says Victorine.

UMass Lowell uses Heartland Campus Solutions’ ADM-3 machines. “It’s a sturdy machine with a built-in card dispenser, cash acceptor, card reader and receipt printer,” says Victorine. The university opted not to accept payment cards at the machines to avoid the need to meet the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS).

As for maintaining the machines, the costs are justifiable for UMass Lowell’s needs. “Our only recurring costs are licensing and hardware maintenance – the

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latter of which is optional but we want the insurance policy,” says Victorine. “We opt to not print receipts, so we only replace the paper every 3-4 years as audit report print outs require it.”

As far as staffing the operation, UMass Lowell’s internal collection policies require that two staff members be present when cash is emptied, says Victorine. “We have to empty the machines every week or two,” he adds.

The usage makes them essential to the program. “They receive a great deal of

traffic and yield $250 to $500 per machine week, and during finals the usage triples,” says Victorine.

Though online revalue is widely used by the campus population, there is no plan to move exclusively online as the machines serve both students and library visitors.

ONLINE WILL NOT BE DENIED Despite the argument for the tried and true value transfer station, online revalue solutions seem to be the primary mechanism

Machines reach end-of-life at West Florida At the University of West Florida, value transfer stations had reached the end-of-life.

“We currently have 6 automated deposit machines and replacing all of them would be rather expensive for the amount of deposits received,” says Joyce Hughes, Auxiliary services manager at the University of West Florida. “Now that we offer Web Deposits, students can add funds to their ID cards anytime, anywhere at their convenience.”

The model used at West Florida is no longer supported, Hughes says. “We have had them for many, many years and they have become obsolete,” she adds. “Replacing them would be expensive, and other options are now available for making deposits.”

COMPARING THE COSTS

Still value transfer stations will play a small role on the campus. “For student convenience, we plan to maintain one value transfer station in our library,” says Hughes.

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$

Moreover, the value transfer stations were only accepting cash and most students don’t carry cash, says Hughes.

“They prefer a credit or debit card option, which we now offer online.”

West Florida installed Heartland’s OneWeb program in the fall of 2014. “If a student is going to make a sizable deposit, they normally use the Web Deposit option rather than using a value transfer station,” says Hughes. “The Web Deposit portal is also a convenient way for parents to make a deposits to their student’s account.”

going forward. Students live online and so, figuratively, are always just a step – or click – away from a revalue location.

With hardware-based revalue, however, the nearest revalue location is often miles away.

It’s about having a conversation with the institution to determine what the needs are, what use cases are required and what their population and community looks like, says Pawlak. “In today’s world where people are accustomed to doing their banking online, pushback to providing information to make deposits online gets lower every day.”

Another advantage to online revalue could be the unavoidable aging of physical hardware. Across the country, thousands of revalue stations are likely nearing end of life. The questions facing their operators are how long should support continue and ultimately should they be replaced or put out to pasture?

“The worst-case scenario is that a value transfer station that a university has had for 20 years – which is common – goes down and is no longer under warranty,” explains Pawlak. “In that instance the university would have to cover the cost to replace the machine altogether, and it could cost $5,000 or more depending on the hardware.”

Beyond user acceptance and convenience, there is this question of cost. How does online revalue compare to its hardwarebased alternative?

“If you look at all the costs associated online revalue versus value transfer stations, they are similar,” says Blackboard’s Pawlak. “But online solutions help alleviate the walk-in traffic not only to a transfer station, but also to a bursar office or campus card office. You really have to weigh up the comparison of self-service online solution to a staffed, physical location.”

As for cost of machines, the initial hardware purchase ranges between $4,000 and $10,000 depending on the vendor and the machine features. Obviously, cash-only machines cost less than those that also accept debit and credit cards or dispense visitor cards.

Pawlak explains that the typical cost of maintenance is 10-15% of the initial cost of the product on an annual basis. “It’s generally inexpensive to maintain the machines otherwise, with paper receipt rolls being one of the few consumables involved.”

On the online side, a campus may pay a one-time set up fee and then an annual licensing and maintenance fee. Additionally, each transaction will incur a fee from the institution’s chosen payment processor in the same way that a merchant pays a per-transaction fee to accept a debit or credit card.

Blackboard offers a cloud-based revalue service to its university clients. “An ongoing annual services fee includes access to the application and hosting services,” explains Pawlak. “There could also be an

initial consulting fee that covers a university branding and appearance of the Web interface.”

Blackboard doesn’t charge a transaction fee, but the campus will pay a negotiated fee to their respective payment processor.

“Typically this is anywhere from 1.5% to 3% of the total transaction value,” says Pawlak.

CBORD offers online revalue through the company’s GET platform. “Students can make deposits via debit or credit card or by billing to their student account,” explains Perkins.

For a campus that’s really interested in a cost-effective way to accept deposits, Perkins stresses the latter option. “We haven’t seen a better way to both drive deposits and reduce fees than to allow deposits to be billed to the student account,” he says. By avoiding debit and credit card processing fees, this internal method can shave several percent off the fees incurred via online revalue.

In addition to the added service capabilities that go along with a Web interface,

MACHINES FACILITATE UNATTENDED CASH DEPOSITS NOT POSSIBLE ONLINE, THEY DISPENSE VISITOR CARDS AND THEY ARE STILL POPULAR FOR ON-THE-FLY DEPOSITS FOR PRINT AND LIBRARY APPLICATIONS

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the convenience factor may be the most significant.

“It is more convenient for students to manage their account online or from a mobile app, and the campus can save initially by not installing transfer stations as well as ongoing by reducing personnel costs and maintenance,” explains Heartland’s Emery. “It also allows campuses to reduce cash handling which can be costly and introduces a possible point of theft.”

ONLINE IS PERFECT FIT FOR ONE COMMUNITY COLLEGE Heartland client Tompkins Cortland Community College is one campus where online revalue is the best fit. The college has cashed in its one and only value transfer station, instead offering online and inperson revalue.

“We removed our value transfer station from campus and either have deposits made online or in our office,” says Tova Sturmer, director of campus card services at Tompkins Cortland Community College.

“Our online deposits account for at least 75% of our total deposits.”

Our campus deposit machine was strictly accepting cash and because of that it didn’t see much use,” explains Sturmer. “It was cost prohibitive to keep the machine up and running, and with a major remodel of the campus in the area that the machine was located, it wasn’t worth the cost to relocate or purchase a newer model.”

Tompkins Cortland uses Heartland’s OneWeb solution for online deposits. There is an annual maintenance fee plus normal transaction processing fees. “For us, the cost for all of that combined is more than the cost of the deposit machine annual maintenance fee, but the added cost of online is well worth the time savings for both myself and our users,” says Sturmer.

As for the value of moving the service online, Sturmer is more than convinced.

“The convenience of online deposits has helped tremendously, and having a mobile app that allows reloading on the fly is priceless,” she adds.

A COMBINED APPROACH While the future of revalue may well leverage a comprehensive online solution, a combined approach that incorporates both online revalue and value transfer stations may provide the best service near term.

“The cash option will be the first to disappear,” says Blackboard’s Pawlak.

“If you remove the cash from the situation, you remove some of the risk that’s associated with these machines.”

That being said, he sees a need for these machines for the foreseeable future, five years at least.

CBORD’s Perkins agrees that a combo offering provides a campus with an effective revalue solution. “Campuses are implementing online solutions, but they are not necessarily displacing automated revalue stations in the process,” Perkins says. “They are complementary approaches to delivering services on campus, and both have their place in a full-service environment.”

“The machines facilitate unattended cash deposits not possible online, they dispense visitor cards and they are still popular for on-the-fly deposits for print and library applications,” he says.

So while the future of campus card account revalue seems destined for the Web, it’s clear that value transfer stations still have some role to play on campus.

“The dynamics of every campus program can vary quite significantly and related costs for third-party credit card processing and cash handling can vary substantially from one campus to another,” says Perkins. “I think what is clear though, and why we have seen such widespread adoption of both approaches, is that they both offer substantial advances in convenience and cost savings compared to facilitating these transactions manually.”

Combo approach to revalue works at Amherst Another example of a combined revalue approach can be seen at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A CBORD client, Amherst has deployed both an online revalue solution and value transfer stations from CBORD. “We have five CBORD revalue stations, and have just purchased the new Value Plus Reload Station,” says Thomas Mahaney, manager of the UCard Office UMass Amherst.

“We’ve deployed two machines in a central library, one at a physical science building, another in our campus center near the standard ATMs, and one in a main residential area.”

The decision to purchase CBORD’s latest value transfer station came, in part, for new security and reporting features. “The Value Plus machine has a lockable cash box, whereas the only lock on the current unit is on the cabinet,” explains Mahaney. “That lock requires another key and offers more security. We can also lock the bill collector itself so that you can take the whole collector unit, so the cash never sees the light of day.”

For UMass Amherst, who uses its own card office personnel to unload the value machines, these added security measures certainly help to lock down the collection process.

There are also more advanced reporting features with the Plus unit, adds Mahaney.

“The new machines can run reports from within the software, which offers us added convenience and flexibility.”

Demand for the value transfer stations increased with the evolution of pay for print on campus, says Mahaney. “Our libraries are open to the public and have gone card only – so no more cash,” he adds.

As for usage tendencies, Mahaney sees some of the larger deposits coming from international students who arrive on campus at the start of a semester with large sums of cash that they need to put it on their cards.

“Summer programs are another great application for the value transfer stations,” he says. “We have conference attendees come in, as well as summer camps with underage kids that don’t usually have a credit card.

The machines are a good way for them to put money on a card.”

Despite the usefulness of the value transfer stations in some instances, the convenience of online revalue has made deposits via CBORD’s GET platform a must for Amherst.

“Our online revalue service carries a minimum deposit amount of $10, so if they don’t want to put that much on a few bucks can be added via the kiosk,” he says. “But roughly 85% of our deposits are made via credit card online.”

There’s an annual fee for the platform and a per-transaction fee, says Mahaney. “The university takes a percentage of POS sales to help mitigate the revalue transaction fees.”

It’s probably easier to explain using an example. If a parent makes a credit card deposit to her student’s account via GET, they see no charges other than the amount of the deposit. “Our office covers both the normal credit card fees for that transaction plus a fee to CBORD for the transaction,” explains Mahaney. The CBORD fees are assessed monthly.

The deposit fee percentage varies depending on the current agreement with the credit card processor and the credit card being used. It can also vary depending on the nature of the transaction. “I don’t have a specific number, but from calculations I have done, our costs are typically in the 2.5% to 3% range,” he adds.

Any POS environment on UMass Amherst’s campus that accepts the UCard debit account as payment is subject to a percentage transaction fee that helps offset the costs associated with online revalue.

Mahaney says on-campus merchants and vendors typically pay a 3% fee.

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Re-carding a campus What to consider when mass issuance is in the cards Re-carding an entire population is a dreaded prospect for any campus card office. It’s a massive project that can be time consuming, tedious and costly.

Why then would an institution undertake a campus-wide re-carding or mass reissuance? Typical reasons for a campus re-carding include: The launch of an institution’s first card program Change from one card technology to another technology, such as the addition of contactless Change in system vendor Addition, removal or change of a banking partner Change in numbering scheme such as the migration from Social Security numbers.

Whatever the reason, the decision to re-issue credentials carries a number of mission-critical considerations.

Some card offices choose to go it alone, but others look outside the institution for assistance. If university staff members are not prepared to shoulder the full weight of the re-carding project and conduct the work in house, there are vendors ready and willing to aid in the process. Campus card system providers typically offer re-carding

assistance as do many ID service providers and resellers.

Assisting with re-carding is part of the service that Heartland Campus Solutions provides to its university clients. Recarding services can range from providing necessary equipment and planning for an issuance event to the offsite printing of the cards themselves.

“We also work with third-party vendors to assist in printing the cards,” says Fred Emery, director of OneCard sales at Heartland Campus Solutions. “We assess the needs of the project and depending upon the volume, we recommend options to best achieve the goal.”

Options can include renting additional printers to enable campus staff to produce the cards directly onsite, producing the cards offsite at Heartland facilities or identifying a third-party partner to meet specific needs, explains Emery.

Blackboard Transact also offers re-carding services for its university partners.

“Through our Campus Card Services group, we play an active consultative role to help a client think through decisions related to card stock and re-carding,” says Dan Gretz, senior director of product marketing at Blackboard Transact. “We offer

Online photo submission expedites re-carding Online photo submission has proven to be a useful tool for the normal carding process, and it seems likely to be a huge time saver in a mass issuance scenario as well.

“The time spent taking pictures when students are in line can be reduced tremendously,” says Fred Emery, director of OneCard sales at Heartland Campus Solutions. “For an initial carding event or a re-carding where new photos must be taken, online photo upload can provide a more efficient operation.”

Heartland has a number of universities using the MyPhoto solution for online photo submission. “I have heard a lot of positive comments with one campus receiving about 90% of their photos through online submission,” Emery says.

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complete end-to-end services, from card procurement all the way through issuance, for any institution and any card type.”

When factoring in all the costs associated with a campus re-carding, outsourcing the project to an off-site vendor can often save a university time and money, Gretz says. Most universities have limited printer capacity that can make re-carding a lengthy process, but a vendor will have equipment to process the job rapidly.

“Re-cardings often take place when campus staff have a number of competing mission-critical initiatives, so outsourcing also enables campus personnel to focus on other projects,” says Gretz.

There are a number of choices that must be made before embarking on a re-carding project. The initial decision typically is whether to produce cards via pre-issuance or in-person issuance. Each model is ideal for certain situations, and either can meet typical campus needs, explains Mark Degan, corporate marketing manager at ColorID. If it’s a reissuance situation, the existing card and photo database can be used to pre-issue or pre-print new cards for the existing campus population. If it’s a first time issuance, however, photos may not exist so this could lead a campus to an in-person or instant issuance process. Still, many campuses choose in-person issuance even if they have an existing photo database, so it really comes down to individual choice.

“We generally see universities do a slow rollout when it comes to re-carding, parceling things out by class, faculty, staff and so on,” says Degan. “There are reasons to for full-scale rollouts, though, particularly if the university is migrating card technologies. In that scenario, a university may opt to rip the Band-Aid off right away. The cost is relatively similar for both approaches.”

PRE-ISSUANCE: ‘PRINTING THEM ALL AND THEN HANDING THEM OUT’

the completed batch of IDs is boxed in alphabetic order and shipped to the card office for onsite distribution.

“Off-site pre-printing is a viable option,” explains Emery. “It reduces the workload a great deal and can also eliminate the need for temporary or borrowed staff for an on-site re-card project.”

“Every year at our facilities in North Carolina, ColorID handles mass reissuances for dozens of campuses – from small private schools to some of the largest multi-site institutions in the country,” says Degan.

ColorID’s service center operates 20 or more printers each day running non-stop on various jobs, says Degan. “At a mini-

Pre-issuance can be done in house or offsite using a third-party vendor. Whether the cards are produced at the card office – perhaps during slower summer months – or remotely at a vendor facility, pre-issuance can reduce the workload on university staff and equipment.

Perhaps the most significant workload reduction comes via off-site card production. Using the campus database of cardholder data and photos, a vendor can print and encode all cards remotely. Typically,

THE RE-CARDING DECISION TREE

A. The first decision is whether to pre-produce the cards via the preissuance model or produce them as the cardholder waits via the in-person issuance model.

mas s re-c arding

A offsite/ vendor

pre-issuance

vendor managed

in-person issuance

B

in-house

C

existing equipment

in-house

rental equipment

E

existing equipment

B. If the pre-issuance model is selected, the choice must be made to either have the cards produced offsite by a vendor or produce them in-house on campus.

C. If they will be pre-issued on campus, determine if existing campus equipment will be sufficient or if additional equipment will be rented from a vendor.

D

rental equipment

mum we’ll have eight printers running for a single university re-carding effort, but we can devote more as needed.”

Each printer can produce 500 cards per day, but it depends on the timeframe of the customer’s project as to how many printers we would devote to each job, he says. “Normally campuses schedule with time to spare, but if a customer had an aggressive date that we had to hit, we could easily produce 5,000 cards daily.”

ColorID’s pre-issuance service includes the printing of variable information, encoding of mag stripes and chips as well as a multi-step verification process to ensure

D. If the in-person issuance model is selected, the next decision is whether to contract with a vendor to manage the process or to handle it using campus resources.

E. If the in-person issuance will be handled in-house, will the card office’s equipment be sufficient or will additional equipment be rented to augment existing equipment.

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that everything on the card matches up to the end user record in the database, explains Degan.

Degan acknowledges that a campus could conduct a preissuance project in house using its own equipment, but there are serious hurdles that must be considered.

A common problem is that universities don’t give their printers a good tune up prior to starting these massive projects, says Degan. “Card rollers can wear out and printers can overheat when printing large batches of cards at a time,” he adds.

If a campus is going to re-card on its own, he suggests getting a printer tune up to make sure that the equipment is fully functional.

“For $250 per printer, campuses can send in their hardware and we’ll strip it down, clean everything, replace rollers and other parts, upgrade firmware, check print heads for missing pixels and then ship them back,” Degan says.

ColorID also offers webinars and training on printer use to educate the additional labor force often needed in a re-carding project. These new staffers rarely have experience with card printers, and proper training can be key to a successful project.

While pre-issuance can reduce the time, labor and equipment required, it does present a unique challenge when it comes to getting finished cards into students’ hands. “The time saved preproducing IDs can quickly be lost if cards cannot be rapidly found when students arrive to collect them,” Degan says.

He suggests that well-organized, alphabetized boxes – perhaps sorted by distribution site such as residence halls – are a must.

IN-PERSON: ‘PRINT THEM WHILE THEY WAIT’ If cards are produced while the students wait, there is no need to find it among thousands of others in a filing box. This can be a

Considerations for mass (RE) issuance of campus IDs TOM STILES, IDENTIFICATION SYSTEMS GROUP

The task of re-issuing all or part of your campus population can seem daunting, but with proper planning it can be a breeze. How do you go about getting the project accomplished on time, accurately, and in budget? The following list includes considerations and suggestions based on the experience of the ISG and our member dealers.

Form a team Have a team that includes the various stakeholders on your campus. This will include your office as well as IT, security, housing and other departments that utilize the card.

This way you can all be on the same page at the start of the project.

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If not, how will you obtain the data? If you are issuing contactless or prox cards, how will the programmed card number be read and added to the database, and how will it be exported to relying systems like door access? If the database includes duplicate records, have it scrubbed to eliminate clutter.

the relevant systems to assure they work properly. Test cards also allow you to review the color, placement of fields, fonts and even card durability. Testing also should include the interface to the various other systems that need card data. Testing and quality control should continue throughout the project.

Manage your photos The ID card is a part of an overall security plan, and current photos help with visual identification. You may need to re-capture photos for all or part of your base to ensure you have updated, fresh photos and improve integrity if current photos are of poor quality or have inadequate centering and cropping.

Pre-printed cards If you presently use pre-printed card stock, now is the perfect time to consider if you should move to retransfer print technology.

Retransfer printers provide pre-printed quality, less card waste (important for technology cards), and they don’t leave a “void” if you need to print over the area where the contactless chip is located. Retransfer printer supplies generally cost a bit more on a per-card basis, but so does preprinting. And, preprinting has other challenges like longer lead times, minimum orders and receipt of +/- 10% of what you ordered.

Consider the costs Cards, printer supplies, rental units or outsourcing charges, labor, and inter-departmental charges are all costs associated with a re-carding. Make a list of each cost area, and be sure there is agreement on the various departmental budgets that will be charged.

If you want to capture new photos, do you have adequate capture stations, and how will you coordinate the flow of people?

Online photo submission is an option.

However, the time required to crop, center, save and approve may be similar to simply capturing a live photo.

Scrub your database An absolute must is an accurate database of cardholders. Does the database include all the fields of data needed for the new card?

Test cards It is very important for test cards to be created, including all machine-readable technologies. These must be tested in

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Supplies If you plan to reprint the cards yourself, make sure you have more than enough supplies, such as ribbons, laminates, cards and printer cleaning kits.

benefit of in-person issuance. In-person or instant issuance is the same process used in the card office throughout the year, except that the mass re-carding aspect escalates volumes significantly.

If this option is selected, the subsequent decision process is similar to that of pre-issuance. Will the work be outsourced to a third-party or handled by campus personnel? A card system vendor or ID services company can be contracted to plan and coordinate a re-carding, ship and set up equipment to expedite the process and provide some of all of the necessary labor needed.

Alternately, the card office may opt to handle the process alone.

In this case, renting equipment can still be an option to increase throughput, provide backups in case of downtime, and reduce wear and tear on the institution’s printers. The catch, however, is that rental costs can add up quickly.

“Renting equipment happens, but not as much as opting to outsource,” says Degan. “Renting is worth the cost if you only

Printing of new cards There are three options for mass printing of the new cards.

Print on your current card printers.

Given enough time, your current card printers may be adequate to produce the job. Today’s card printers are very reliable and capable of printing hundreds of thousands of cards over their lifetime. In our experience, the “wear and tear” concern is overblown and not a valid reason to avoid using your current printers.

Rent additional printers. Your local ISG dealer can provide rental systems to give you additional muscle when you need it most. The cost of a rental unit includes delivery, installation, training and ongoing maintenance during the rental period.

Outsource the card printing to an outside company. Outsourcing is likely the easiest method, but is also likely to be the most expensive. Keep in mind that time will still be required on your part to work with the vendor to place the order, develop the card design, gather your database, approve proof cards and test cards.

need a printer for a week or two, but once you get to the onemonth mark you’re probably only a few hundred dollars shy of the overall cost of the machine,” explains Degan.

It’s a better approach to purchase a printer than rent one because a campus can always use another printer for other issuance projects, or as a backup in a pinch, says Degan. “If a printer ever dies or goes down, you can just pull that purchased printer off your shelf; you’re putting that investment to good use rather than just leasing it and having to send it back.”

As for which approach is best, it really depends on the university. “Is the department handling the issuance overbooked or overrun on a daily basis? If they are, then they may not be ready to handle a full re-carding project,” says Degan. “That’s when it might be more attractive to outsource the work even if the price tag seems bigger. But what is often overlooked is the cost of labor for the university.”

Distribution of new cards, identity verification, card activation Most campuses that re-issue require the cardholder to pick up the new card in-person and surrender their old card. An important part of the process is to verify the person is who they say they are. Some campuses ask for a state issued ID as verification. To prevent long lines, schedule pick ups based on groups over a period of time. For instance, freshman pick-up could be Tuesday from 9-5, but based on last name (9-Noon for names A-M, 1-5 p.m. for names N-Z).

There should be a process to activate the new card and de-activate the old card at the time it is picked up. There should not be a waiting period for the new card to be active, nor should you have two cards active for any person.

On-site service technician If using your own equipment, consider contracting with your local ISG dealer to have a technician on-site during the project. This provides the assurance of a certified expert to help you through the process and service anything that breaks.

email, university websites, social media and more. Creating awareness is the key factor.

You can, for example, conduct a multi-step campaign and launch the card project. Start in the spring with a card design competition, and use social media and sporting events to create a buzz. During the summer, promote the card but don’t unveil it. Once August hits, make the big reveal with giveaways and swag as students pick up the new ID. Provide an FAQ detailing the new cards and why they are being issued. Parents want to see important safety changes, so this guide educates students, staff and parents.

Mass (re) issuance is no small task, but with proper planning and the right team, you can make it straightforward and cost effective.

About the ISG Identification Systems Group (ISG) is a nationwide network of local identification system integrators, providing high quality, cost effective solutions backed by local support and the strength of its Professional Services Certification program. Each company works together to provide seamless nationwide support.

Ideas for Communications It is important to communicate in advance with your students and staff about the re-issuance. Think of it as a marketing campaign. Communications can be through

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A re-carding in Boston Proper staffing is critical when it comes to a re-carding project, says Blackboard’s Gretz. “Knowledgeable and available personnel and an adequate number of printers to maximize throughput are the two biggest factors in ensuring success of a re-carding,” he says.

In an in-person reissuance scenario, Gretz agrees that hardware maintenance is paramount. “Prior to a re-carding, make sure all equipment has been serviced to eliminate down time,” he says. “Also make sure equipment is adequately monitored to deal with jams, ribbon replacement and restocking empty hoppers, all of which can cause lengthy delays if not caught right away.”

“Anything that can reduce lines and wait times will be well-received,” adds Gretz.

You have to have the flexibility and capability to clean printers, be willing to get your hands dirty working on them, as well as have printers that can fill in if one goes down at a moment’s notice, says Degan. “It’s these kinds of considerations that makes ‘re-carding’ a scary word for universities.

Boston University recently tackled its campus re-carding head on. The CBORD client decided to migrate from a standard mag stripe card to a combined mag stripe and contactless credential.

“The university uses the mag stripe for physical access to buildings, the fitness center and library, and the contactless smart card functionality for dining services and our on-campus debit card,” says Marc Robillard, executive director for auxiliary services at Boston University.

BU opted for HID’s iCLASS contactless technology when it was determined that university did not want to use the student and staff ID number for financial transactions at dining locations, bookstores and vending machines. “Massachusetts has strict laws on financial accounts and we did not want to mix normal identification functions with financial transactions used in the course of campus commerce,” explains Robillard.

In addition, Robillard explains that BU decided to use biometrics to improve the security around its dining program. “The biometric used is a fingerprint and the method of verification is match on card,” he explains. By storing and matching the biometric template on the card, it eliminates the need for a central biometric database.

Migration to the new credential meant that BU faced a mass re-carding effort.

“The logistics are always daunting. How do you get new cards to 16,000 undergraduate students and 1,000 faculty and staff before the start of the academic year?” asks Robillard. “On top of the sheer numbers, we were concerned about student acceptance of the new biometric features.”

Work on the re-carding project began in the summer with continuous card printing and issuance beginning with the start of the academic year. Robillard and his team used university staff and hardware to produce all of the cards in house at BU’s Terrier Card Office.

“We produced the new cards using the existing photos we had on file,” he says. “New students had their cards produced and issued at summer orientation or at our card office at the beginning of the school year.”

MANAGING COSTS

By the middle of September, all new cards were issued.

Regardless of the scenario, re-carding an entire campus population is an expensive undertaking, but there are ways to minimize costs.

As Emery explains, costs associated with a re-carding project will vary depending upon the scope of the event, time frame, card technology, and any additional equipment that may be needed to conduct the work.

“Planning ahead keeps costs under control so you don’t have last minute expenses,” Emery adds. “I recommend a campus explore the different options – evaluating the time it will take, equipment required and staff workload for each – and do a side by side comparison of costs.”

When asked if he had any advice for others embarking on a campus wide re-carding project, Robillard says that a major undertaking such as this can actually be an opportunity for a card office.

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“Inform your community early in the process,” he says. “Use the re-carding as an opportunity to meet as many students, faculty and staff as possible and show them the high-quality service that your card office provides.”

A university needs to be conscious of the obvious costs – the physical supplies such as card stock and printer supplies – but also acknowledge other cost considerations that are often overlooked, Gretz explains.

Examples include costs for personnel, marketing and customer awareness as well as opportunity costs from lost progress on other projects.

“Probably the single most important cost-saving action by a university is having experienced staff manning the printers,” says Gretz. “Particularly when re-carding with a contactless credential that can cost several dollars each, educated staff can help eliminate scraps and re-prints.”

“I’m teaching a new course, traveling the world, writing a book and trying to stay in shape. Every morning when I swipe my ID card, I enter this building on a mission to help my students succeed.”

— Neil G. Professor Risk Management

Every person in your program has multiple identities, and securing and protecting those identities is no small task.

Datacard® ID solutions enhance learning environments by safeguarding students and staff — creating a strong sense of community with trusted, long-lasting, secure ID cards.

Visit Datacard.com/CR80 to learn more by downloading your free ID Solutions Guide.

© 2015 Entrust Datacard Corporation. All rights reserved.

DATACARD GROUP IS NOW ENTRUST DATACARD

Disaster recovery for card programs Prep work and communication can minimize damage DAVE FALLDIEN, SENIOR SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR AT DALHOUSIE STATE UNIVERSITY

Let’s start with this tidbit: Within two years after Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992, 80% of the affected companies that lacked a business-continuity plan failed, according to FEMA. The campus card system is an important and intricate part of campus life. It facilitates campus security, access control and payments. Thus, lost transactions or down time have a direct impact on the entire campus, whether it’s a student being locked out of a residence or lost sales at retail locations. These impacts are financial and affect overall trust in the system.

Disaster recovery is the misunderstood, undervalued ugly duckling of the card

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service industry. It’s a dirty little secret that IT folks keep wrapped up to shelter clients from the realization that something bad can, and likely will, happen.

Though seldom discussed, everyone in the IT field has stories of lost email, documents, or even entire systems. The key is not loss, but rather the recovery.

DEVISE A PLAN There are three basic parts to any disaster recovery plan: 1) build a business impact analysis; 2) define the scope of your new disaster recovery plan, including recovery times and individual responsibilities; and

3) create a communication strategy that includes who should be informed in each different failure state and who is responsible for sending out communication.

Though it seems simple, it is surprising how few people, departments and campuses actually implement the process.

The business impact analysis often moves beyond the scope of IT and should be considered a required part of any successful operation. It doesn’t take long to realize that if a POS system is offline across campus, transactions are not being processed and sales is being lost. Not only are you losing the transactions, you are also paying idle staff. These costs add up

quickly and have a direct impact on your bottom line.

As the person responsible for the financial side of the card system, you should be able to see your disaster recovery plan at any time. If the person who maintains your card system infrastructure does not reside in your department, you should have ongoing dialog including how the last disaster recovery test went.

Business impact is the easy part of any new disaster recovery plan. The meat of the plan is in the definition of scope. It is also the most difficult part of the plan, but the reward time well spent pays off rapidly in the event of an outage.

The scope section should clearly define the situations addressed by the disaster recovery plan. This should be a comprehensive list, including everything from natural disasters to server-level crashes, lost hardware and anything in between.

In simple terms, the scope includes everything you are going to include in your disaster recovery plan.

priorities of the downed system you want to return service to first. The final step is to bring all stakeholders into the same room and ensure that everyone’s expectations are the same. Only then can rules can be created, and more importantly, followed.

It is a hard process because every department thinks that their needs and systems are top priority, but this is not always the

WHAT ABOUT ME?

A communication plan is another vital part of a disaster recovery plan.

It should clearly outline how people will be communicated with in the event that a situation defined in the scope section occurs.

Every contact should not only have a name, phone number and email, but also have their responsibilities and secondary non-institutional contact details. If there is a localized problem that has disabled campus systems, sending internal email with vital instructions isn’t really going to help.

Many institutions – mine included – ensure that all staff members maintain a work email account with a third-party provider that is different than the regular provider.

This way, emergency communications can be distributed to both primary and secondary accounts.

Each year this communication list should be reviewed and updated as part of a regular process by a specific department.

The responsibility should fall squarely on

Perhaps as important as knowing what’s in scope is knowing what lies outside of it. This tends to be the touchier subject.

The unfortunate truth for some users is that their immediate needs might not align with what the institution constitutes an emergency.

The best way to get a full list of what you would like covered is to conduct a business impact analysis as part of an overall risk assessment of the system. This is ultimately a simple and clear cut way to ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to what services will be covered.

Impact analysis has three defined steps.

First, a planning team needs to sit down, and actually make a decision on what is considered high, medium and low priority for your institution. Second, the analysis must be filled in to determine exactly what aspects of the system carry which level of importance. This enables campus officials to make more informed decisions on what

one department so that there is ownership of the process.

TESTING, TESTING Finally, the most important and leastaccomplished part of disaster recovery planning is setting up a routine to test the plan.

DEFINING A BUSINESS IMPACT ANALYSIS BEFORE A CRISIS HITS ENABLES PEOPLE TO BE FAR MORE AGREEABLE WHEN IT COMES TO PRIORITIZING RETURN OF SERVICE case. Defining a business impact analysis before a crisis hits, enables people to be far more agreeable when it comes to prioritizing service return.

TALK TO ME

A disaster recovery plan is only as good as its last test. Sure, you can have everything well documented, lots of information on service times, recovery procedures and which servers should be checked and when, but all that quickly goes out the window if something goes wrong.

Each disaster situation listed in the scope should be tested periodically. We don’t all have the staff or the time to do a full disaster preparedness drill on our campus, but we do all have time to make sure that our recovery plan is valid.

Without routine testing, the time spent designing and developing a disaster recovery plan is for naught.

Time should be taken during plan creation to define what should be tested and how often. This leads to the entire institution being more comfortable with the plan, and ultimately it increases response times when an issue inevitably occurs.

Everyone can, and will, suffer a data loss or disaster situation at some point. The trick is being confident that your campus will be minimally impacted through proper preparation. How well you prepare now will determine how effective and efficient you are when disaster strikes.

Oh yeah, now that you have a new disaster recovery plan, make sure to give a copy of it to as many people as necessary.

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Will Bitcoin make the grade on campus?

Georgia Tech adopts the digital currency for reloading campus card funds For many colleges and universities, the student ID is central to making purchases on and off campus. But what happens when a new payment method enters the fray?

The digital currency known as Bitcoin has been making headlines for several years now, and it has started making its way to campus.

While a host of universities around the globe have been experimenting with Bitcoin, Georgia Tech University is the first to tie the new tender to the campus card.

BIT WHAT? Bitcoin is an Internet-based currency and medium of exchange that enables instantaneous transactions and borderless transfer

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of ownership. It was developed in 2008 and launched in 2009.

It isn’t an official tender but rather a community-run currency system not controlled by a central bank or government.

This means, for example, that Bitcoin can be transferred from person to person without first going through a financial institution or clearinghouse like standard currency. This can lead to lower fees and flexibility, but it also creates concerns among governments, as there are no prerequisites or subjective limits to its use.

Think of it this way, email lets you send letters for free anywhere in the world.

Skype lets you make phone calls for free anywhere in the world. In a similar fashion, Bitcoin lets you send money to anyone,

anywhere in the world for free – or for a much smaller than normal transaction fee.

It also has to be said that Bitcoin remains an experimental new currency that is still in active development. This means that its future is anything but certain, as it depends heavily on the adoption and participation of the general public. It also must dodge regulators that seek to squash it for fear it fosters the laundering of money, funding of illicit activity and avoiding of taxes.

COMING TO CAMPUS Georgia Tech’s campus card system, the BuzzCard, was the central player in a pilot that utilized Bitcoin to deposit funds into students’ declining balance accounts.

The BuzzCard Center housed a Bitcoinenabled merchant terminal to facilitate the process.

Alternately, students could download the “Jacket Wallet” app to make deposits.

Jacket Wallet is a dedicated Bitcoin mobile wallet designed exclusively for Georgia Tech students and alumni by Bitcoin wallet provider Pheeva. Jacket Wallet can be used for instantaneous transfer of Bitcoin anywhere in the world at no cost.

As part of the pilot, the university also tested Bitcoin for purchases at stadium concession stands.

push-forward with a pilot to measure user interest and behavior,” he adds.

The campus card program pilot includes the ability for students, faculty and staff to utilize Bitcoin as a payment type for declining balance deposits, explains Pete.

He explains that BitPay’s partnership with Georgia Tech is two fold. First was the concession payment service that covered the 2014-15 football and basketball seasons. Second was the acceptance of Bitcoins to fund the campus card account that enables purchases from food to parking to laundry.

WHY GEORGIA TECH?

TECH FOR TECH …

Georgia Tech alumni Tony Gallippi and Stephen Pair founded a company called BitPay. They partnered with the Georgia Tech Athletic Association (GTAA) to increase awareness of Bitcoin with their target demographic of tech-savvy college students, says James Pete, senior director

There were two primary reasons behind the Bitcoin pilot at Georgia Tech, and the first was in the institution’s name.

“Georgia Tech is a technology focused institution and our students are early adopters of new digital solutions and services like Bitcoin,” explains Pete. “The

SIMPLIFY CAMPUS LIFE WITH one card

TO SPUR HIGHER EDUCATION ADOPTION, IT MAY REQUIRE CAMPUS CARD SOLUTION PROVIDERS TO INTEGRATE ACCEPTANCE OF BITCOIN INTO THEIR POINT-OF-SALE SOLUTIONS

of Campus Services-Information Technology Group at Georgia Tech.

Founded in 2011, BitPay specializes in Bitcoin payment processing and works to enable clients to accept the payments.

BitPay entered the fray in the technology’s early days and claims to be the largest Bitcoin payment processor in the world, with 60,000 merchants on six continents.

BitPay reached out to Georgia Tech Administration to engage in conversations regarding the acceptance of Bitcoin as a form of payment for on-campus transactions, says Pete. “Through those conversations, the BuzzCard Program decided to

BitPay merchant base has grown rapidly, and this could predict future service expectations of our students.”

The second reason behind the Bitcoin pilot was the lower fees associated with the digital currency. “From a business perspective, BitPay offers a no-fee, no-risk Bitcoin merchant acceptance program,” explains Pete. “It does not assess higher education merchants a monthly fee, nor do they assess transaction fees.”

This model is very different from a credit card transaction that carries a merchant fee of two to three percent of the total transaction amount, Pete explains. “Most importantly, there are no chargebacks, as

www.1card.com campussolutions@e-hps.com 1-800-486-4462

BitPay facilitates the exchange rate and assumes the associated risk.”

Fees aside, the current methods of payment seem to work just fine for the campus card. So why accept Bitcoin?

“I see parallels to the origins of PayPal – its adoption was driven by the fact that customers did not have to share their credit card information with merchants,” explains Pete. “Bitcoin transactions inherently have a higher level of anonymity.”

Bitcoin acceptance is still in its infancy, but Pete is optimistic that it will grow. “The greater the number of points of purchase, the greater the use by customers. It will

take some time for Bitcoin to reach the popularity of PayPal, but the opportunity exists,” he says. “Just as the campus card program wanted to pilot acceptance, I encourage students to purchase a portion of a Bitcoin and conduct their own tests.”

A FALSE START OR A PIONEERING EFFORT? Tech’s Bitcoin pilot yielded very small adoption rates. Through student athletic concessions during the fall 2014 football season – which included four games with 9,000 student seats for each – there was

Canadian U’s bookstores to accept Bitcoin The bookstore at Simon Fraser University’s network of campuses is set to accept Bitcoin payments. The bookstore initiative marks the latest foray into Bitcoin for Simon Fraser, who became the first Canadian university to accept Bitcoin donations in August 2014.

According to The Georgia Straight, university-run bookstores at Simon Fraser’s Burnaby, Vancouver and Surrey campuses will accept Bitcoin payments for textbooks and other store items. Automated Bitcoin vending machines, called AVMs or Bitcoin ATMs, have been installed at the three locations.

Ontario-based BitSent is the company providing the Bitcoin ATMs, which allow students to purchase Bitcoins, or fractions of Bitcoins, with cash. Users don’t need to set up an account or share personal banking information to make the exchange. They simply insert the amount of cash they wish to convert to Bitcoin into the machine and it is credited to their Bitocin wallet.

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an average of only six Bitcoin transactions per game.

More telling still are the results of the campus card declining balance function.

Upon conclusion of the official pilot, the university reported no Bitcoin deposits made to BuzzCard accounts.

This all begs the question: does Bitcoin have a future on campus?

Pete and Georgia Tech remain optimistic.

“The opportunity exists to leverage the Bitcoin acceptance program for paying student tuition, fees, room and board and other expenses,” he says.

Another source of traction could be the international student population. Pete explains that Georgia Tech’s international population is 20% with students hailing from more than 115 countries.

“I think there is a good use case for our international students who typically leverage Western Union and other fee-laden services to transfer money,” says Pete. “Worse yet, we have international students who land on our campus card office’s doorstep with large amounts of cash.”

From a campus card industry perspective, Pete suggests there could be yet more possibility for growth. “I see the opportunity for the various solution providers like Blackboard, CBORD, Sequoia Retail Systems and others to integrate the acceptance of Bitcoin payments into their point-of-sale solutions for in-location acceptance,” he says. “I think this level of integration will be important for increasing higher education adoption.”

It’s still early days for Bitcoin on campus, but low adoption rates will likely be a theme until there is campus card vendor integration and an uptick in knowledge about the currency. Without direct acceptance for purchases on campus, students are unlikely see the value.

But as an increasing number of campus services go mobile, it only makes sense for universities to be ahead of the curve.

The Bitcoin pilot at Georgia Tech reflects this notion, and should be commended as a foray into new possibilities for the campus card.

NACAS 2015

SAN ANTONIO NOVEMBER 1 - 4, 2015

The conference for campus innovation.

• 80+ educational sessions covering all college auxiliaries: campus cards, dining, bookstores, parking, housing, printing, laundry, and more.

• A Business Solutions Center with over 180 exhibiting business partners.

• Discuss campus solutions in the new Business Connection Center.

• Keynotes by world-renown speakers Tim Sanders and Alison Levine.

• Play golf on the award-winning La Cantera Golf Course.

• Explore the River Walk, just steps from the conference location.

Learn more and register at: nacas.org/annualconference

Smart cards pass the test in Nigeria HID commissioned to provide secure issuance, verification solution for students Exams are an important facet to a student’s educational life. Here in the U.S. they help determine a student’s aptitude and mastery of the subjects necessary to succeed in higher education.

The same holds true in Nigeria, where every year millions of students take their exit exams from the high-school level. The unfortunate truth, however, is that not everyone that takes these exams is honest about their identity.

To help combat this, a new mobile ID system is being implemented for Nigerian students in an effort to improve exam validation processes and cut down on identity fraud. The West African Examinations Council is spearheading the project along with HID Global who has provided contactless smart cards to more than 2.2 million Nigerian students enrolled in the testing program.

Comprised of five member countries – Nigeria, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Liberia – The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) conducts public exams for primary, junior and senior secondary school levels; aptitude tests for institutions and corporate bodies; and issues results

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and certificates of completion for all administered exams.

Each year, WAEC registers more than 2.2 million students for exams conducted at more than 13,000 testing centers across Nigeria alone. It’s a staggering number of credentials no matter how you cut it.

To complicate matters, the old ID system saw exam registration and authorization done manually in a time consuming and fraud-susceptible process. Students registered online and were provided a paper receipt that would be manually inspected by a proctor at the time of testing.

The system lacked a secure process to confirm that students were who they claimed to be. According to a WAEC spokesperson, students were able to manipulate the exam process by fraudulently enrolling for and attending exams, with cases of impersonation a common occurrence at testing centers.

A NEW SYSTEM Understandably, tracking and recording cases of identity fraud was difficult, and a new system was needed. So WAEC turned

to Lagos, Nigeria-based tech company, Botosoft, who in turn commissioned HID Global to assist with the development and deployment of a secure card issuance and mobile ID system.

Botosoft is the prime contractor to the WAEC, with HID acting as a subcontractor and partner. The two have worked together on other projects, such as the Biometric Central Motor Registry, explains Robert Smith, senior director of professional services, Government ID Solutions at HID Global.

The solution to WAEC’s problem came in the form of online registration for an ID card that could then be read using a mobile device at each exam site. The cards are valid only for the exam being held for that particular semester and expire immediately upon completion of the exam. Without a valid card, students are not allowed to take the exam.

With the new system, candidates are verified in real-time, making it difficult for students to manipulate the results. The system also reduces paperwork significantly.

To get the cards into students’ hands, WAEC needed a secure issuance system.

MORE THAN 18,000 MOBILE READERS HAVE BEEN DISTRIBUTED TO 3,500 EXAM CENTERS ACROSS NIGERIA. THEY ENABLE SUPERVISORS TO IDENTIFY AND AUTHENTICATE TEST TAKERS BY ACCESSING STUDENT INFORMATION FROM THE SMART CARDS AND VALIDATING IT AGAINST THE CENTRAL DATABASE.

The personalization solution developed

by HID relies on centralized issuance from the Botosoft facility in Lagos. “This configuration manages 48 HID printers and produces approximately 80,000 cards per day,” says Smith. “The 1.8 million cards produced for the spring 2015 exams were completed in less than four weeks running 20 hours per day. Cards are batched and packaged per state, with the WAEC state offices completing the final delivery of the cards to the students.”

The system will produce another 400,000 cards in fall of 2015.

“The FARGO DTC4500e printer was chosen for this application, in part, because it has an optional built-in RFID encoding module,” explains Smith. “The cards are encoded inline during the personalization process.”

HID provided a solution that accepts the raw data from WAEC’s online enrollment process, validates the information, and prepares it for use in personalizing the cards. HID also assisted with the design and development of the mobile reader application software used in the project.

A NEW PROCESS Under the new system, students register online and the information is used to personalize and issue a contactless smart card rather than the previous paper credential.

This same information is also stored in a central biometric database that can be accessed in real-time by the mobile readers at the exam sites.

“All data captured during the registration process is stored on the WAEC server, and only a subset of the student information is sent to Botosoft for personalization,” explains Smith. Once personalization is complete, the Botosoft application sends a

notification of issuance and cardholder ID number back to the WAEC servers.

“Student data is then purged from the Botosoft servers,” he adds.

More than 18,000 Chainway C2000 mobile readers have been distributed to 3,500 exam centers across Nigeria. They enable supervisors to identify and authenticate test takers by accessing student information from the smart cards and validating it against the central database. The company is looking at alternative readers with smart phone being considered as a future option, says Smith Botosoft was contracted to visit 36 state centers and train approximately 1,000 test center employees who in turn trained the remaining 15,000 examiners who would operate the mobile readers.

The mobile readers are distributed to the disparate Nigerian states at the same time as the cards. Each reader arrives with only the necessary, site-specific student and exam center data stored locally in the device, explains Smith.

If there is a loss of cellular service, the application can validate students in an offline mode. “Any information collected – such as the date and time a student checked in, exam center location, or any malpractice attempts – is stored locally and synced at a later point,” explains Smith.

Exams like those in Nigeria are an important stepping-stone in the lives of students seeking admission to college.

Without verification that the proper scores are attributed to the right individuals, the credibility of the entire process can be compromised.

The WAEC solution adds trust to the Nigerian examinations, and with this success WAEC plans to expand to its other member countries in Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Gambia.

The WAEC student ID card features the name and photograph of the student and must be must presented to exam proctors at the exam center.

The cards feature multiple embedded technologies not visible to the naked eye, including: Integrated contactless chip UV blue WAEC logo Guilloche graphics Micro-text Warped patterns with faded edges Text relief, two-color over print Faded photo box edges overlapping with personalized photos

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FROM THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR:

Positioning your card program for success … and funding JEANINE BROOKS, DIRECTOR ACTION CARD, THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA

How can Auxiliary Services professionals empower their card/transaction system management, champion the services and programs driven by these campus enterprise level systems and secure funding to support campus-wide programming? Campus card programs serve as part of your university’s branding strategy, as well as a trusted data source and access tool for campus services. The tool may change with the next technology iteration but your program’s mission remains the same – streamline campus operations and enhance customer service.

How can you best drive administrative awareness and promote future funding for your operations?

For administrators program value is driven by enhanced customer service, stable operations, cross campus systems integration for consistent data sources, and strong problem solving for departmental or campus-wide solutions.

DRIVING PROGRAM FUNDING Card/transaction systems vary by institution for funding solutions. There are fully institutionally funded operations, fully self-funded operations as well as others that are a blend with some services generating revenue and others funded from institutional sources. Below are strategies that can assist you in highlighting your program’s value to campus administration for funding requests.

STEP ONE: BUILD YOUR OFFICE AND YOUR BRAND You need a unique department staffed by full-time employees dedicated to utilizing the power of these systems to bring solutions to campus. When transaction systems are lumped under another department name with only shared staff or part-time employees and student workers, you have limited your ability to brand the programs and services, limited administrative recognition for budgeting, limited the time employees can spend installing standard services, and limited employees ability to focus on important custom solutions that solve unique issues for your campus environment.

If internal departmental expertise is not available in your office structure, strong campus partnerships are critical for support expertise. At The University of Alabama, we have

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a formal, contracted relationship with OIT for full support, and they are a critical partner in our program development.

They have also become a program champion, recognizing and communicating value to a wide base of campus contacts and administrators.

You also need a convenient office location with operational space, as well as a strong branded online presence. When you make the campus community dependent on the card program for basic daily services such as dining, door access, library check-out, campus event access, etc., your customers need to be able to find you and the information they need.

When possible, self-managed access is beneficial, as today’s customers do not function on traditional business hours.

Establish clear mission and vision statements as your program foundation and post them online for your administrators and customers to view. When developing a program or service, identify the fit with your department, organization, and institutional mission and vision statements.

STEP TWO: GET TO WORK Prove your program worth by providing a unique solution to a high profile issue. Examples at the University of Alabama include Online Photo Submittal and MyTickets, an online electronic ticketing system primarily used for student football tickets. Worth can be defined not only in dollars saved but enhanced customer service, improved efficiencies and secure operations.

Provide automated data and access tools for campus departments. Can your program help your institution manage growth? Can you provide critical usage data to departments and automate reporting? Can it be the tool to link multiple campus systems for an integrated service for customers?

CONSIDER A STRATEGIC APPROACH THAT HIGHLIGHTS YOUR CARD PROGRAM’S VALUE TO ADMINISTRATION, AND YOU WILL BE BETTER POSITIONED FOR FUTURE FUNDING REQUESTS Determine the best technology model for your application software, operating systems, devices and service programs based on your campus environment. That may be in-house based, out-sourced to a third party vendor or a mix of internal and external programming. Remember, whatever you implement, your program’s reputation is on the line so you need to budget, prepare for and schedule system hardware and software upgrades and provide multi-layered support available 24/7/365.

Remember that system stability is a critical factor in success, and uptime is a measurable benchmark for the administration.

Don’t neglect disaster recovery planning.

STEP THREE: SHARE AND CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES Consistently provide data to upper administrators. When you quietly achieve success and systems run smoothly, administration may not be aware of the diversity, scope and volume of transactions. Consider regular communication such as: Standard monthly data includes number of transactions, dollar value of transactions, number of on and off-campus merchants, account deposits, number of active cardholders, number of readers and service/program lists.

Benchmarking data showing how your program performs against similar institutions both regionally and across the nation.

Create brief business plans for any new services and operations to provide upper administration and program partners to define service and financial outcomes, program benefits, resources utilized, and assign responsibilities.

Encourage your department to celebrate and share their successful program initiatives on campus and nationally by authoring papers, writing industry articles, presenting at conferences and applying for awards. Always share program accolades with your campus partners and your administration.

Do not forget to work with your student newspaper, because your administration does read it.

Encourage industry and professional staff training and promote employee campus involvement. Casual networking conversations at a campus, regional or national event can turn into projects to solve inefficiencies on campus. At the University of Alabama, MyTickets was an SGA concept. They knew what they wanted, Athletics and Student Affairs agreed, but they needed a department to implement the solution.

CONCLUSION Your staff should serve as results-oriented project managers of enterprise level systems that support Academic, Financial and Student operations. When you provide diverse services and programs campus-wide while resolving issues and inefficiencies, your department will be better positioned for administrative funding requests to support the program infrastructure.

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Catholic high school deploys facial recognition for access control GINA JORDAN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, AVISIAN PUBLICATIONS

As the bell rings each morning at St. Mary’s Catholic High School in St. Louis, a camera takes a picture of every face that passes through the front and back entrance.

The private, all-male school of 350 students is located in a high-crime area on the city’s south side, and school administrators had been looking for an extra layer of security to complement the regular video monitoring system. It was then that they learned about facial recognition. In early 2015, Blue Line Security Solutions, a St. Louis business operated by former law enforcers, installed its biometric solution at the campus.

Every student, staffer and school volunteer was photographed and enrolled into the system. Even police and other first responders in the neighborhood have been enrolled for quick access to school facilities.

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“They walk through the outer door and they enter a vestibule, and inside the vestibule is the camera,” says St. Mary’s President Michael England. “It takes a picture of the face, and if it is recognized in the system, a light goes on signifying that the door has been unlocked and the person is able to enter.” If unrecognized, the door does not open and the individual must be buzzed into the school by a greeter or receptionist.

Everyone who enters and leaves the building is videotaped, and the system is programmed to scan this video in real-time searching for faces. When it finds a face, it uses facial recognition technology to check the encountered face against the database of enrolled faces. If a match is found, the system can let approved users enter or

notify administrators and police if a known troublemaker shows up.

England reports close to 100% accuracy enabling entry for enrolled individuals. But he knows it’s tough to completely eliminate a threat when kids are pouring into the school at the same time.

“Once that door is open, they’re holding it for each other and coming in,” he says.

“We always say if somebody really wants to get into the school, they probably can find a way. But facial recognition gives us one more level of security and enables us to react proactively if we have problems.”

England sees the technology’s potential in other applications, such as in the school store or cafeteria as way for students to pay.

“There’s also been talk about using it as a way for people to enter the campus via car in certain parking lots,” England says.

“I think everybody sees the added value that it has brought. It really hasn’t changed anything or made things more difficult. It just helps us to keep our community safe.”

The all-inclusive price tag for the solution at St. Mary’s is $15,000. Administrators liked the cost, especially with the Archdiocese of St. Louis expected to help pay for it through safety grants.

THE STIGMA SURROUNDING FACIAL RECOGNITION BIOMETRICS While the St. Mary’s school community seems to have adjusted easily to the new biometrics system, not everyone is eager to take the plunge.

“All of us walk through security cameras everywhere we go now,” says Joseph Spiess, senior partner at Blue Line Security Solutions. “But the stigma on facial recognition comes from companies that have indiscriminately placed people in their systems without cause or justification.

Some have shared, transferred or even sold the facial information that they captured.”

Blue Line says its system is designed specifically for security or access control.

The information collected remains in the client’s database and is never shared.

“We simply provide a security camera that’s trained by software to look for specific threats and make notifications,” Spiess says. “At no time do we hit big databases like some are doing. We’re not hitting Facebook or going into other big sources of stored photos to randomly target or market to people.”

The company sees facial recognition as one of the most effective forms of security in the corporate world. Instead of using cards or fobs, employees can glance at the camera while they’re walking to their destination – and the results are virtually instantaneous.

At St. Mary’s, the camera recognizes approved visitors and immediately sends an electrical signal to the door’s access control device to enable entry. But the technology can also be used to identify threats or single

out bad actors for security personnel to monitor.

Blue Line and its users report a high accuracy rate. The company says it benchmarked the system at St. Mary’s for 30 days and found it to be more than 99% accurate.

When it didn’t work, bad and poorly lit photos were typically to blame.

“The higher quality digital photo you have, the better success rate in matching,” Spiess says.

Other company clients include St. Louis circuit courts and the federal government.

“We have a smaller corporation that’s using it for a workplace violence prevention strategy,” Spiess says.

He says the uses for facial recognition range from securing domestic violence shelters to detecting terrorist threats at the airport. “Whether it is retail trying to reduce theft or entities in potentially violent environments like courthouses or schools, it really has to be looked at as a process to keep them safer,” concludes Spiess.

STUDENTS ENTER A VESTIBULE WHERE A CAMERA TAKES A PICTURE OF THE FACE, CHECKS IT AGAINST THE ENROLLED BIOMETRIC TEMPLATES AND MAKES AN ACCESS DECISION

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Open-loop payments gain ground on campus As more students tote plastic, institutions grapple with convenience versus cost ZACK MARTIN, EDITOR, AVISIAN PUBLICATIONS

If some university administrators had their druthers, the only payments accepted on campus would be from the campus card or cash. At the other end of the spectrum, others ask why the campus card program is ‘competing with the financial industry,’ offering accounts, holding funds and processing payments. They suggest ditching campus card payments altogether in favor of ‘good old Visa and MasterCard.’

But in the modern world, neither extreme position has proven practical. Most campuses find it necessary to accept a mix of payment options, including open-loop credit and debit cards.

While open-loop payments might have once only been accepted at the bookstore for major purchases, they are now accepted at an increasing number of locations around campus, from dining halls to vending machines.

was done with debit and credit cards and 40% with cash. Campus cards, meanwhile, were only responsible for 4% of payments.

The original idea behind the multifunction campus card was about keeping money on campus, says Bill Norwood, chief architect at Heartland Payment Systems. That along with avoiding costly interchange and processing fees – possibly as much as 3% – would mean the campus would take in, and hold on to, more money.

But then a societal shift occurred derailing some of these plans. “The younger generation started arriving on campus with payment cards,” Norwood says. “Parents wanted kids to have a Visa or MasterCard to pay for books and maybe accrue points for their loyalty program.”

To keep pace, institutions allowed open loop to migrate from the bookstore to other areas across campus. But it has not come

CAMPUSES WERE ALL ABOUT MITIGATING FEES FROM PAYMENT CARDS, BUT THEY HAVE STARTED EMBRACING OPEN-LOOP PAYMENTS AND REALIZE THEY CAN’T TURN THEM AWAY The trend in overall student spending – across all on and off campus venues – is certainly continuing toward open-loop payment cards. Student Monitor’s spring 2015 survey shows that 52% of spending

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without costs and complexities.

“Open loop creates additional costs, paying processor fees that universities don’t have with closed loop,” says Kent Pawlak, director of product strategy at

Blackboard Transact. “You have to balance the convenience with the costs to the institution.”

The transactions are safer for the student and the consumer, but not necessarily for the university. When a fraudulent purchase takes place, it’s typically the merchant – in this case the university – who has to take the financial hit. “With closed loop campus card payments, you have a defined community and there’s less risk, so instances of fraud are rare,” says Pawlak.

Loyalty programs from credit cards are also impacting payment choices. For some students – and their parents – it’s all about the miles. “People don’t carry cash and they want the loyalty points,” says John Diaz, vice president of business development at Sequoia Retail Systems.

Campuses were all about mitigating fees from payment cards but that’s changed, Diaz explains. “Our customers have started embracing open-loop payments and realize they can’t turn them away,” he says.

Diaz credits the evolution in campus food services as a catalyst for the change.

“The food service providers on campus have moved from managing a dining hall to having a ton of branded concepts on campus,” he says.

The stalwart all-you-can-eat options still exist, but more common are food courts complete with Starbucks, Einstein’s Bagels and Chick-fil-A. These large-scale chains accept the campus card but insist on regular payments as well, says Brian Hendrix,

product manager at Sequoia Retail Syseven bring open loop into these hard-totems. They cater not only to the campus reach environments. population but also to members of the Where a university is located may also community who don’t have campus IDs. play a part in whether open-loop payments Institutions or their vendors also want are accepted, says Pawlak. Campuses lovending machines to be available to evcated in metropolitan areas tend to have eryone. In the past it might have just been a harder time convincing students to use cash or campus card at these devices, but closed loop payments. Institutions where it’s more and more likely that open-loop students spend higher percentage of time payments are also accepted, says Tal Clark, on campus and are more residential in senior vice president of Global Product nature, have an easier time keeping paySales at payment processor First Data. ments local to the card.

“Many of the vending machines are acceptOften it’s the freshman class that gets ing contactless or near field communication the most use out of a campus card and transactions too,” he adds. the funds placed on them, Norwood says.

The holdout from open-loop payment Freshmen that live on campus often have to on campus may prove to be the printers, purchase a meal plan and rely on intramuphotocopiers and laundry, says Pawlak. ral commerce opportunities. As students “There are campuses that don’t accept move off campus, the venues competing them for micropayments where transacfor their dollars expand. tions are pennies at a time,” he adds. But First Data has seen a lot of activity for still, there are solutions available that can open-loop on campus in recent cr80_ad_1.5-2015-sept:Layout 1 8/26/15 11:31 AM Pagepayments 1

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years, says Clark. “It’s prevalent almost everywhere – athletic arenas and most food service options are taking credit and debit,” he adds.

Though fees typically come up when discussing of open loop, Norwood points out that closed-loop payments come at a price as well. “There are costs to run a closed-loop system – purchasing terminals, assigning people to run the system and reconciling the payments – it doesn’t come cheap.”

This fact is certainly hastening the migration to open loop on some campuses.

But while the trend points to a continued rise in open-loop payments on campus, it doesn’t mean closed loop payments are going away. “Even as campuses deploy open loop, they are also retrofitting and adding to their closed-loop programs,” Pawlak says.

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Mobile food ordering extends reach of campus dining services ANDREW HUDSON, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, AVISIAN PUBLICATIONS

College students love their mobile devices. A recent Intel survey of 1,000 incoming college students found that 45% expect to rely on their mobile device more than their friends or family while on campus.

But whether it’s a wide-eyed freshman or a grizzled upperclassman, the rigors of a student schedule work up an appetite. Feeding students on campus has long consisted of cafeteria-style dining and on-campus restaurants, but just as technology has evolved, so too have the options available to students in need of a meal.

The latest trend to enter the dining services fold is mobile food ordering. Students place an order remotely via smartphone or tablet and choose a delivery option or skip to the head of the line for pickup. The service has gained

significant momentum on campuses nationwide, and it is helping on-campus food services extend their reach to off-campus students.

For mobile food service provider, Tapingo, the idea of calling up food orders from a mobile device is as much a cultural shift as it is a technology shift.

“We expect to be able to communicate, get informed, and transact anytime, anywhere,” says Daniel Almog, CEO of Tapingo. “This cultural shift is reflected every day on college campuses, as students are demanding convenience in all aspects of university life.”

College students aren’t likely to plan and prepare three well-balanced meals. “It usually goes ‘Need food now,’ and whatever meets the

MOBILE ORDERING HAS DELIVERED A SIGNIFICANT UPTICK IN SALES FOR CAMPUS DINING OPERATIONS, INCREASING THROUGHPUT DURING PEAK BUSINESS HOURS, DECREASING CONGESTION AND ENGAGING MORE STUDENTS

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intersection of ‘close by, convenient and fast’ is what gets consumed,” says Almog.

BUILDING A PLATFORM Mobile ordering offers a convenient alternative to students, but the service can also benefit the university food services.

CBORD has offered mobile ordering solutions, to varying degrees, for the past 10 years.

The company’s first foray came in the form of Webfood back as 2004. At that time, orders were more likely to come in via PC or laptop, but the solution still featured many of the hallmarks of contemporary mobile ordering.

“Mobile ordering is great for the university that has an operational problem in food services that it wants to solve, or that wants to increase the level of service they provide to students,” says Susan Chaffee, director of product development at CBORD. From our earlier mobile ordering solution, we learned that dining services face tough operational challenges when trying to roll out this type of service themselves, says Chaffee. They used the experience in the design of their new GET mobile ordering solution.

“With GET it’s kept simple,” says Chaffee. “It is easy to use for the student, and on the backend it’s easy to swap out menu items and prices.”

GET is integrated the Micros point-of-sale platform so that orders placed through GET

automatically post to the campus’ POS system, she explains.

“This enables them to easily receive orders and report on those orders that come through online,” says Chaffee. “It’s an important operational consideration because without POS integration, dining services would have two different reporting mechanisms.”

With GET orders, the preferred payment method is the campus card account. “We have several universities that only accept campus card payments and don’t accept credit or debit,” says Chaffee. “They realize that the more students use it, the stronger the overall card program becomes.”

Mobile ordering is one component of CBORD’s overall GET platform that includes a range of additional account management and other services.

Campuses often start out with GET for the account management features, but they have had others show interest in GET simply for mobile ordering. “We really believe in the platform concept, and it has been proven in both directions,” says Chaffee.

Once a university is signed up for the GET platform, they automatically receive the ability to offer online ordering. Chaffee explains that this allows them test the concept anytime, rather than jump blindly into a full rollout.

The campus can fold in the online ordering app as an additional service. “If a campus can

Vandy serves late night diners via mobile Today, Vanderbilt utilizes mobile ordering to support the existing off-campus dining program, but the initial goal was to expand dining options during the construction of new residence halls, explains Mark Brown, assistant director of business services at Vanderbilt University.

CBORD’s GET mobile ordering solution has also helped on weekends and late at night when dining options are more limited. “It has allowed Vanderbilt students to have a larger range of dining options after normal hours,” says Brown.

It also helps to navigate some challenges associated with the university’s ID card.

“Vanderbilt’s Commodore Card doesn’t have a student number printed on it so there was no identifier for students to give vendors over the phone when placing orders,” Brown explains. “Using the mobile app or desktop browser, GET allows users to log in using their university username and password through single sign-on. The order is then sent to the merchant via email or fax and charges the student’s card without needing identifying information.”

As with other universities, students that purchase a meal plan from Vanderbilt Campus Dining also receive a pool of “Meal Money” that can be used on- or offcampus. Students above freshman level also receive a Meal Money credit for any missed meals.

Another declining balance account can be used once Meal Money is depleted, says Brown. On-campus meal swipes cannot be used off campus, and credit and debit cards are not accepted through online ordering.

“In addition to the other plusses, mobile ordering benefits Vanderbilt Campus Dining through the commission earned on sales made off campus,” says Brown.

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get their students acclimated to GET as their one-stop shop for all campus card needs, then adding online food ordering is just a natural extension,” says Chaffee.

TAPPING INTO THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE Rather than expanding an existing portal of service, Tapingo offers a standalone, dedicated mobile ordering app. The company has made significant inroads and now serves more than 100 college campuses across the U.S. and Canada.

“With students driving the demand for mobile everything, outside competitors to the campus dining program are moving in on the university ecosystem,” explains Almog. “We create opportunities for campus dining pro-

grams to enter new markets and optimize their performance.”

Based on the prevalence and flexibility of Tapingo, some campuses have asked that we extend our service to solve other concerns from concessions to fundraising and ticket sales to bookstore purchases, says Almog.

How Tapingo is utilized, however, is ultimately decided by the university’s specific focus.

“Some campuses implement our technology to emphasize meal plan usage at on-campus venues, while others want our help targeting upperclassmen via their off-campus program,” says Almog.

Tapingo can accept payment types including meal equivalencies, declining balance, open loop debit and credit as well as split-tender transactions. “Tapingo is PCI Level 1 compliant, and is operating successfully on Blackboard, Heartland, ITC, Atrium and CBORD Gold

and Odyssey campuses across North America,” says Almog.

DELIVERING THE GOODS As Tapingo’s presence on campuses has grown, so too have the service capabilities of the solution. The latest addition to the mobile ordering app is a new delivery service, aptly named “Tapingo Delivers.”

“We’d heard time and time again that campuses wanted to offer delivery. With Tapingo Delivers, campus dining programs can address the needs of upperclassmen living off campus, and increase convenience for students, faculty and staff on campus,” says Almog.

Tapingo handles staffing and logistics for delivery via a network of couriers it builds in the local community.

‘GET’ting fed Here’s how it works. Students first open the GET app and log in; they then select GET Food and the ordering option.

From there, students are provided with a list of locations, and depending on the venue can select delivery, pickup or order-ahead options. Once those options are selected, menus are displayed.

Mobile orders are then added to the student’s cart, where they can pay with their campus card account or, if the institution desires, a credit or debit card.

“Student orders are also saved through the GET platform so that repeat orders are easily called up and placed again,” explains Susan Chaffee, director of product development at CBORD. “Recent orders are all saved by date but they can be removed at the student’s discretion. Students can also designate certain locations as ‘favorites.’”

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Tapingo at Pitt The university of Pittsburgh utilizes Tapingo at several on-campus dining locations, and relies on the mobile food services company to support its off-campus merchant program as well.

“When using Tapingo on-campus students can use their meal plan’s Dining Dollars, the declining balance program Panther Funds, credit or debit cards and even PayPal,” says Julie Bannister, manager of Panther Central at the University of Pittsburgh. “Off-campus students can use Panther Funds, credit or debit cards and PayPal.” Tapingo has helped to solve some challenges on Pittsburgh’s campus. “We have been able to expedite our lines during the peak lunch and dinner rush,” says Bannister. “This program has enabled us to restructure the organization and expedite student orders.”

It has been well received at Pittsburgh. “We have received great student feedback in regards to the timing of their orders being ready when they get to the location,” says Bannister. “This past school year the students voted Tapingo the Best App around campus through our campus newspaper.”

Tapingo Delivers intends to transform campus dining by facilitating on-demand delivery from on-campus venues to both on- and off-campus customers, says Almog. “This service solves a key problem by leveraging existing dining operations. It opens new markets for traditional university food programs – expanding the reach and accessibility of campus meal plans and dining services.”

Mobile ordering has delivered a huge uptick in sales for campus dining operations, increasing throughput during peak business hours, decreasing congestion and engage more students, says Almog. “Tapingo Delivers takes this same principle and increases the size of the pie.”

ORDER UP Regardless of the solution provider, mobile ordering seems to be a winwin service fit for any college campus.

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Both campus operators and students benefit from mobile ordering capabilities, says Almog. “Extending the reach of campuses to include delivery from on-campus venues helps achieve the goals of food services on campus.”

For campuses that have seen success with mobile ordering, there are two common themes: successful marketing of the solution and an overall experience that’s fast and convenient, says CBORD’s Chaffee. “You can have the best online ordering app and experience out there, but it’s crucial to follow that through all the way to the delivery or pickup stage.”

For any app or service to succeed, there must be a benefit to the user.

“If a student places a mobile order but still has to wait in a line to pick up their food, then they may not use the app again because there’s no real value,” explains Chaffee. “The operational changes are key – not just being able to handle orders, but also being prepared on the pickup side.”