CR80News
Spring 2011
Exploring the utilization of identification technologies on college and university, K-12 and corporate campuses
WAGING âœŞWAR over fees
Financial aid refund solutions fight for market share - Annual bank partner survey - Shared off-campus programs thrive - New IRS regs for campus cards
Contents
Spring 2011
4 | OPINION | Better financial education needed for students
23 | REGULATION | IRS demands new reporting for off-campus merchant programs
6 | ID SHORTS | News and posts from CR80News.com
24 | SECURITY | WiFi locks enable easy to deploy security at Quinnipiac University
6 | VIDEOS | Campus card clips from CR80News.com
24 | SECURITY | Card Systems key components of campus security programs
12 | FEATURE | Waging war over fees: Financial aid disbursement providers do battle for share of campus market
26 | INNOVATION | Visitor management crucial to physical security
17 | PAYMENTS | Why all the fuss over a PIN-debit fee?
28 | CASE STUDY | University of Virginia dorms go with wireless, modular locks
19 | BANKING | CR80News annual bank partner survey 2010 22 | OFF CAMPUS | With off-campus programs, more can be better
30 | OPINION | Campus card programs: Dramatic innovation needed
INDEX OF ADVERTISERS Agilysys www.agilysys.com/hospitality Blackboard www.blackboard.com/contactless The CBORD Group www.cbord.com Digital Identification Solutions www.dis-usa.com/college Evolis www.evolis.com HID Global www.hidglobal.com/ideal-CR80 Off Campus Solutions www.ocampussolutions.com SARGENT www. personacampus.com U.S. Bank www.usbank.com/campusbanking Wells Fargo www.wellsfargo.com
19 | BANKING | CR80News annual bank partner survey 2010
5
22 | OFF CAMPUS | With off-campus programs, more can be better
2 31 19 21 32 29 11 9 25
26 | INNOVATION | Visitor management crucial to physical security
Perspective EXECUTIVE EDITOR & PUBLISHER Chris Corum, chris@AVISIAN.com EDITOR Zack Martin, zack@AVISIAN.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Andy Williams, andy@AVISIAN.com CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Daniel Butler, Ryan Clary, Liset Cruz, Seamus Egan, Jill Jaracz, Gina Jordan, Autumn Giusti, Ross Mathis
ART DIRECTION TEAM Darius Barnes, 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 2011 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.
4 | CR80News | Spring 2011
Better financial education needed for students Zack Martin Editor, AVISIAN Publications To make a campus card program successful it requires training. Staff must teach students how to use the card to get the most out of it. Card offices have learned the hard way that education is crucial to successful service delivery. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like the same can be said for financial aid and the refund products used to get the money to students. I have a friend who works in financial aid for a higher education institution. She walks prospective students through the financial aid application process and explains everything to the student and the parent. She may meet with them three to five times before everything is wrapped up. During the meetings she repeats that the student will need to pay back these loans after finishing school and goes over when the payments will start. She even administers a quiz covering the details of the loan. The student must pass it before signing the documents. Even after all that students approach her when they’re close to finishing school and ask, “I took out loans for school?” While my friend spends a good amount of time educating students, at times it’s still not enough. When it came to reporting this issue’s cover story about financial aid refund products, education was a reoccurring theme. Institutions and vendors claim to educate students on the products, but with the outcry over fees charged I find this hard to believe. How can we do this better? How do we best get through to students and parents? Some may ask why parents need to be in-
volved at all if the student is over 18, but parents can help drive the point home. Perhaps a financial aid counselor should meet with just the student to explain the loan and terms. After that a meeting with the parent and the student could go over the same materials. While this may seem redundant, if a parent is there the kid zones out and doesn’t pay attention. While this is the time to go over the details of the student loans, it could also be an opportunity to review financial aid refund delivery options as well as the fees and liabilities of each option. People may assume meetings like this are the norm, but they’re not. Too often, schools simply point the student to a Web site to fill out forms. There may be a meeting when they first start school and years later when they leave, but there’s no guarantee. It’s not enough to mention it at orientation or just mail the student materials. Either one-on-one or in a small group, a counselor or administrator should sit the student down and explain the program, quizzing him on key details. This won’t end the public outcry against the fees associated with some of these programs, but at least schools will be able to go back and show that the information was thoroughly covered.
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ID SHORTS Highlights from the leading campus identification and security publication. Stay up-to-date on all the news at www.CR80News.com
ID cards for zombies on college campuses?
keys as well as any campus security director or security vendor I’ve heard.
PNC Bank to provide banking services for Chicago university
So zombies might not be the typical badge holders on campus but as the campus game known as Humans vs. Zombies spreads we may see a new use for the student ID. At Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, zombie students tried to tag human students to turn them into the undead, while humans defended themselves with nerf dart guns.
“In order to enter, one must simply slide their Onecard and punch in the number code required by the machine,” explains writer Ridge Hudson. “I believe it would greatly benefit the students if every dorm on campus had a card access lock instead of an ancient keyhole.”
PNC Bank and Saint Xavier University, Chicago, have formed a new banking relationship emphasizing money management and financial education for the school’s nearly 5,000 students, faculty and staff.
He details the economic advantage for students noting that a replacement for a lost physical key costs $50 while a lost card costs only $15. And the fact that the card can be cancelled and the dorm room protected does not go unnoticed.
As part of this arrangement, Pittsburgh-based PNC will host financial literacy workshops for students and employees at Saint Xavier campuses in Chicago and Orland Park, Ill. Topics will include basic banking, credit management, savings and investing, identity protection and home buying.
Participants sign up online to play and receive a ‘human’ ID card. When a zombie tags a human, he claims his victim’s ID number and logs the kill online. The human then becomes a zombie and can join the hunt.
Adds Hudson: “For those of who are still not convinced that a card access lock is better, let’s say that someone does obtain your card. Even if they manage to swipe it in an attempt to enter your room, they will still be required to type in the number code. Without both of these, getting into another student’s room is out of the question.”
One zombie told a reporter for the Plain Dealer, “it’s a lot of fun … you meet people from every major and talk to people you would have never talked to.” And a faculty member added, “this school has a reputation of people sitting in their rooms doing chemistry homework so to see someone running around campus at full speed is good.” Humans vs. Zombies first started at Goucher College in Baltimore but is now played on campuses around the world. While the human ID at Case Western is not the official campus card, could this be the next application for our campus card system providers?
Student provides eloquent case for card-based access control on campus If you are looking for a student perspective on dorm security that is pro card access, a student writer for Valdosta State University’s independent student paper, The Spectator, provides a great view. The author describes the benefits of card-based access control over physical 6 | CR80News | Spring 2011
MIT launches new ID card-based printing plan MIT’s Information Services and Technology division is piloting several printers with a holdand-release system that requires students to swipe their MIT card to complete the print job. Assuming a successful pilot, a campus-wide roll out is planned for summer. The initiative was recommended by an institute-wide task force seeking to make the campus printing environments greener and more efficient. According to MIT’s academic computing department, the university spends $270,000 on printing annually. In addition to the new printer solution, the campus is in the process of rolling out public scanners as well.
Students and employees will have the option to link their Cougar Card to PNC accounts, adding ATM and purchasing functionality to campus cards that are used to enter residence halls, check out library books and access meal plans. Also available to students is Virtual Wallet Student, an online banking solution designed to help students help themselves with money management, along with mobile and text banking options.
Jolly announces MIFARE, prox and UV integration with HID Global printers Jolly Technology’s latest releases of its ID Flow and Lobby Track software support MIFARE encoding, proximity card reading and ultraviolet layer printing with HID Global’s Fargo printers. The Jolly Encoder supports reading and writing MIFARE compatible cards using an HID printer equipped with a MIFARE compatible reader such as HID’s OMNIKEY devices. Other encoding technologies can be used with the external encoding feature.
ID SHORTS The UV printing technology allows for the printing of static text and images and variable text and images from a database to be printed as an independent layer in the card design. UV printing can only be seen under ultraviolet light.
Previously, the school’s magnetic stripe ID card was used only for identification and dining purchases. With the implementation of CS Gold, the school opted for contactless HID iCLASS credentials, improving security and convenience with its tap and go functionality.
The integration creates a process for enrolling a visitor, printing on and reading an access card, and writing all the information back to both the visitor management system and access control system simultaneously.
“We saw this as a chance to invest in emerging technologies, which we expect to become even more pervasive in the coming years,” said Jeff Gibson, the university’s director of budgeting and operations. “We looked at multiple vendors, and we were most comfortable with the line of CBORD products available to us. Particularly after deciding to move forward with HID Global’s iCLASS technology, we felt CBORD could best meet our needs.”
Virtual student card pilot featuring NFC launches at French university The “Nice Future Campus” project, an experimental program designed to apply the near field communication standard to the campus of the future, launched with 100 students at the University of Nice in Sophia Antipolis, France.
“Yesterday’s student IDs that were used just to enter a campus building or earn a discount now function as integrated cards for security and commerce,” said Mark Doi, director of education market strategies for HID Global. “HID is pleased to see our iCLASS smart card technology optimized as a single-credential solution that improves cost efficiencies for the university while simplifying campus life for students.”
Billed as the first virtual student card, the program includes a context-based location information service where a student can view the route to his next lecture or find the location of a book in the library by touching an NFCtagged target on campus
“CS Gold’s campus card management software, combined with the added security and convenience of iCLASS credentials, creates a campus solution that is a sound investment now and into the future,” said Cindy McCall, CBORD’s vice president of marketing.
Through an interactive shop window, this service also offers access to general information about the school.
Missouri university uses CBORD, HID for its first one-card program Missouri Southern State University in Joplin has implemented its new campus-wide, onecard program utilizing the CBORD Group’s CS Gold to power door access, dining purchases, snack/beverage vending, printing, bookstore purchases, health center charges, recreation center privileges and other transactions across campus.
Heartland enables campus card value adds at laundry, copy terminals Heartland Campus Solutions released uDeposit, an add-on module for laundry and copy terminals that lets cardholders add funds to their Campus OneCard account using a bankcard at the unattended terminal. This will help cardholders who are low on funds to finish the tasks at hand without breaking to find a value transfer station. They simply press the deposit key right on the laundry or copier terminal, swipe their credit card and add funds to their OneCard.
uDeposit makes deposits more convenient for cardholders and it reduces the need for dedicated deposit machines that require staff to remove and reconcile cash. It was added based upon client desires to have a more convenient way for students to add funds without the need for additional deposit machines, explains Fred Emery, VP and General Manager, Heartland Campus Solutions. The company recognized that students in the midst of doing laundry may need to add funds, and it is not always convenient to go find a deposit machine or return to their room to make a web deposit. It seemed like a natural addition to the product offering to be able to add funds directly at the terminal, says Emery.
Ingersoll Rand, VDS partner for contactless campus security solutions Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, manufacturer of Schlage contactless smart credentials and readers, is working with Vision Database Systems (VDS), a supplier of ID tracking, issuance and management solutions. The partnership will let VDS customers pair open architecture smart credentials and readers from Schlage with the ID issuance, management and tracking services offered by Vision Database Systems. Over the last 15 years, VDS has made the IDMS badge issuance software that interfaces with most popular plastic printers, access control systems, library, food and proprietary campus software. According to Ingersoll Rand, VDS, has helped more than 50 of the largest colleges in the United States navigate from magnetic stripe cards to proximity cards and, now, to smart card technologies. Spring 2011 | CR80News | 7
ID SHORTS One card does it all for students at Texas university The card system at the University of Texas at Arlington enables student and staff ID cards to be used to access buildings, make onand off-campus purchases, and clock in and out of work. The university’s one-card system, implemented by campus card provider CBORD, is the cumulative effort of 15 years of updates and added functionality, according to an article in Campus Safety. The magnetic stripe card controls access to campus buildings, tracks meal plans, records time and attendance and provides identification on university grounds. This system not only keeps students and university employees safe by restricting access to sensitive areas and university events, it also allows cardholders to take advantage of privileges such as meal plans and campus laundry facilities. The same system also tracks an employee’s time and attendance through a PC-based virtual time clock.
Canadian university card manager creates bogus debit cards, steals $30,000 A student manager at the Kitchener, Ontario campus of Wilfrid Laurier University, stole some $30,000 by issuing fake campus debit cards, some in the names of comic book characters. Another employee in the office first detected the scheme, which took place between 2001 and 2007. An audit that cost the school $100,000 led to the arrest of Nikola Tomljenovic. A prosecutor said Tomljenovic, who pleaded guilty, used his access and knowledge of the university’s debit card system to create nine cards under fictitious names, including Thomas Wayne, the fa8 | CR80News | Spring 2011
ther of Batman, and Richard Grayson, Robin’s secret identity.
NuVision awarded statewide contract
CardSmith launches self-service card station
The State of South Carolina has tapped NuVision Networks, Napa, Calif., to provide its colleges and universities with the company’s CampusOne One Card system.
Campus card provider CardSmith has rolled out a “cashto-card” solution that enables existing cardholders to check a card account balance and re-value their account using cash. An optional card dispensing module is also available enabling campus guests to purchase and use visitor cards. The Self-Service Card Station is good for busy locations such as libraries, copy centers and computer/print labs. The station creates a new service channel for cardholders and, when coupled with CardSmith’s Web-Based 24/7 Account Center and Live-Agent Phone Care services, provides additional cardholder benefits. Cardholders swipe their card to get their current balance, and then load any combination of $1, $5, $10 or $20 bills to revalue the card. The station securely communicates with CardSmith’s processing center via the Internet using 128-bit SSL encryption. Internal meters track all cash and card dispensing activity allowing administrators to perform reconciliations and audits. Online reporting from CardSmith’s On-Demand Web Reporting Server provides real-time insight into station usage and performance. The Self-Service Card Station only requires access to a standard AC power outlet and Internet data jack. The station is made using a high security steel cabinet and T-handle lock and can be wall mounted or placed on an optional stand. It also comes standard with a high capacity bill stacker and integrated thermal receipt printer.
The One Card integrated suite includes ID card production; commerce, event and door access transaction systems; cashless vending and laundry; online student voting, e-commerce, event ticketing and parking permit registration; and dining services. South Carolina’s schools will also now be able to utilize CampusONE’s real-time data integration with various systems including Banner, Jenzabar, PeopleSoft and Datatel. In addition, the schools will be equipped to benefit from NuVision’s business partner interfaces, such as laser print management, laundry systems, bookstores, payment processing and off campus commerce.
Lumidigm technology securing campus recreation facilities Lumidigm provided its fingerprint imaging technology to secure the recreation facilities at Free Amsterdam University, a European college with 8,000 faculty, staff and students. The school employed the new biometric solution to eliminate card pass-backs, a process that enables unauthorized people to gain access to the recreations facilities. The administration expects to break even on the system costs within 3 to 5 years. The solution is provided by biometric integrator EasySecure and includes four desk systems for enrollment and seven biometric access control gates at the facility.
ID SHORTS Chinese university expands LEGIC’s campus card solution Tianjin Polytechnic University (TJPU) is partnering with Switzerland’s LEGIC Identsystems to expand its contactless ID system.
Florida State University in Tallahassee recently issued nearly 50,000 new contactless campus ID cards to students, faculty and staff and has deployed hundreds of new contactless readers. Tulane University in New Orleans, the University of Texas at Tyler, and Georgia’s Mercer University are among the other institutions to go contactless.
“The adoption of Blackboard contactless technology offered a seamless migration path and provided cardholders with an intuitive, easy to use upgrade to the card,” said Richard Wynn, FSU’s card director. “The addition of a new level of security was another major factor in our decision to change from our previous card technology.”
TJPU has been using LEGIC’s technology to manage payment processes and access control on its campus, but now the new agreement allows the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering to upgrade more than 3,000 POS terminals to LEGIC advant technology, as well as develop new terminals and access control readers for the whole campus. Zhenkai Wan, president of Academy of Computer Science and Software Engineering at TJPU, comments: “Year after year, we issue more than 5,000 new campus cards. Thanks to the flexible expandability of the LEGIC smart card platform we can now enhance our identification system independently and adapt it to future demands.”
Blackboard: Momentum building for contactless on campus Since its announced launch less than a year ago, more than 50 institutions have adopted the Blackboard and Sony Electronics contactless FeliCa-powered platform that was developed specifically for U.S. higher education institutions. Students at these 50 schools use contactless ID cards to get into secure buildings and facilities, pay for books, meals and laundry and even access campus events, all at faster speeds than with traditional identification technologies.
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Spring 2011 | CR80News | 9
CR80News.com/videos watch these and more videos online …
Heartland takes ticketing to the next level
Application enables visitor tracking
Using the campus card for ticket management, loyalty at the same time
Ticketing applications for college sporting events aren’t new for campus card programs, but adding functionality that enables a student to search for specific seats at venues is different, says Fred Emery, vice president and general manager at Heartland Campus Solutions.
BadgePass enables schools to integrate access control databases into one, says Lindsay Cornell, dealer manager at the ID Group Inc. The visitor management application lets an organization read a driver license, credit card or other type of government-issued identification so a school can know who is in a particular building. “It’s a lot more secure way of tracking your visitors than a paper log book,” Cornell says.
Villanova University set up a lottery system to help manage demand for its popular men’s basketball games. There is a point system where the student earned points for attending basketball games, says Read Winkelman, vice president of sales at CBORD. Each game attended earns the student points and the greater chance that they will receive tickets to attend additional games.
Heartland created an application called One Card Box Office that has the look and feel of a TicketMaster site but enables students to search for assigned seating at school events. Students can search for seats in a price range, see where they are located and purchase them with the campus ID or a credit card. Students then receive the tickets in a PDF via e-mail, in the mail or can pick them up at the venue’s box office.
“The original application was to make sure students were using student tickets and not selling them to other folks, but the university has been able to take this and create a loyalty program to help encourage students to support athletics,” he says.
Direct-to-card printer adds dual-sided lamination, security
3D photos as a security feature MorphoTrak’s 3D photo enables the portrait on the document to look like a 3D image. “Now you can verify that this card has a security feature that is valid, but you can also connect it to the owner of the document,” says Brett Tally, identity solutions for MorphoTrak.
10 | CR80News | Spring 2011
Digital Identification Solutions’ newest printers, the EDIsecure DCP 360+ Direct Card Printer, adds new features such as dual-side lamination and smart card encoding for both contact and contactless technologies, explains Jonathan Bowen, product marketing manager at the company. “More and more of the market, especially the smart card market is wanting to put laminate on the backside of the card to protect it against abrasion, dye migration and wear and tear,” says Bowen. Dual-sided lamination is also more effective than single-sided lamination in preventing card warping.
Duke adds student ID info to campus iPhone app Duke University launched a mobile application for the iPhone that enables students to access info about the campus. “We wanted to provide a campus card section of that Duke mobile application,” says Matthew Drummond, director at the DukeCard Office. “Students can login with their university network ID and they can view their balance and add funds, view their last seven days of transactions and they can also add funds to their account without ever getting out of line.”
Our campus is growing. We found an access control solution that can grow with us. – Quinnipiac University, C T
Copyright © 2011 ASSA ABLOY Inc. All rights reserved.
SARGENT locks powered by PERSONA campus software gave Quinnipiac University the ability to replace mechanical key locks with an integrated key card solution, as well as expand their existing card-based access control system to all main-campus and off-campus buildings. The solution had every feature the university’s facilities team required: • Easy installation and management • Full audit capabilities • A one-card solution utilizing ID credentials • Seamless integration with third-party databases • Choice of WiFi, Power over Ethernet and Offline • Flexibility to interface with a wide variety of enterprise access control software systems Read more about the Quinnipiac solution and other campus case studies featuring SARGENT and CORBIN RUSSWIN at personacampus.com or call 877.380.8014.
L -R: Gina Frank – Associate Dean of Student Affairs, John Meriano – Associate Vice President for Administrative Services, Keith Woodward – Director of Facilities, Jon Terry – Assistant Director of Facilities, Janice Wachtarz – Associate Vice President for Information Services, John Twining – Director of Emergency Management, Sandip Patel – Financial Systems Specialist
WAGING ✪ WAR over fees
Financial aid disbursement providers do battle for share of campus market Zack Martin Editor, AVISIAN Publications Financial aid refund systems have been a hot topic the past year. The conversation has focused around the fees these programs charge students and whether they leave them more in debt than necessary after they leave school. The Washington Post, syndicated radio shows and numerous other publications have called out these programs with claims they gouge students. Higher One, a financial aid refund management company that went public last year, has been the primary target of this ire. Dispersing financial aid is a tough job for schools that can be labor intensive and there’s a lot of money at stake. In 2011 the U.S. Department of Education expected to deliver $156 billion to colleges and universities. Schools also have to comply with Title IV, a section of the Higher Education Act of 1965, that spells out rules with regards to U.S. federal student financial aid programs. Department of Education rules under this title state that institutions may utilize bank accounts for disbursing aid but an alternate means must be available for students that do not have or want an account. While Higher One has been the leader in the field, other companies are coming out and offering competing products. Blackboard, Heartland Campus Solutions and Sallie Mae all have products that aim to make it easier for schools to distribute the financial aid money and for students to access it. Higher One The New Haven, Conn.-based company has been serving the financial aid market since 2000. Its OneDisburse product enables schools to hand over its financial aid refund management to Higher One, says Casey McGuane, chief service officer at the company. “Before a campus uses OneDisburse they are printing checks, reconciling checks, and collecting preference all in compliance with Title IV,” says McGuane. “We handle all the education and promotion, collect the preferences from students, and offer the technology so they can handle and receive their refunds.”
12 | CR80News | Spring 2011
An add-on for OneDisburse is the OneAccount, a bank account that can be automatically established for a student’s financial aid. This is the product that has been most criticized in the past year due to what many call “gouging fees.” These include .50 cents per PIN-based transaction and $19 abandoned account fee that goes into affect after nine month of inactivity. The OneAccount and its fees are comparable to a student checking account from a traditional financial institution, says McGuane. “Our service is free to anyone,” he says adding that the account has no fees if the student uses the account in specific ways. This would include no out of network ATM uses and no PIN-debit purchases, among other things. “For your unbanked student OneAccount offers the opportunity for anyone, regardless of credit history, to obtain an FDIC insured account,” McGuane says. Part of making sure that students use the card and associated account correctly is properly educating them, says McGuane. “We see campuses investing in physical space for financial education and literacy,” he says. Educating students about the account is an important part of orientation and ID issuance at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville,
Fees charged to campus: Comparison of financial aid disbursement solutions Vendor responses … Blackboard: BlackboardPay
… no cost to the campus …
Heartland: Acceluraid
… annual fee that equates to the amount the institution would have spent on postage and mailing of checks …
Higher One: OneAccount
… A little less than the cost of a stamp …
Sallie Mae: No Fee Account
… no cost to the campus …
Tex., says Kristy Vienne, director of Bearkat OneCard Services at the school. “We teach them to swipe and sign,” she says, in order to avoid the PIN-based transaction fees. “We don’t want students to pay any fees and we give students the option to select other refund preferences or send it to their bank of choice.” Sam Houston has been using Higher One since 2003 and has integrated the refund management system with its campus ID cards. And while the option to use another account exists 80% of the university’s students use the OneAccount, Vienne says. The school also has a financial literacy center where students can learn about their loans and how to manage their money, Vienne says.
As for the criticism of Higher One, Vienne doesn’t understand it. “I don’t see how students not spending appropriately is representative of Higher One,” she adds. “That’s still the student’s responsibility.” By using Higher One Sam Houston has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars, Vienne says, as the cost of printing and mailing a check to a student is between $20 and $25 a piece. “It’s a product that saves the university money,” she says. Higher One charges a school “a little less than the cost of a stamp” per transaction for the service during each disbursement period, McGuane says.
Fees charged to student cardholders: Comparison of financial aid disbursement solutions Blackboard: BlackboardPay
Heartland: Acceluraid
Higher One: OneAccount
Sallie Mae: No Fee Account
Monthly service charge
$0
$0
$0
$0
Inactivity fee
$3.50 (after 9 mths)
$5 (after 24 mths)
$19 (after 9 mths)
$0
Signature debit transaction
$0
$0
$0
$0
PIN debit transaction
$0
$0
$0.50
$0
ATM in-network
$0
$0
$0
$0
Number of in-network ATMs
43,000
1
1
43,000
ATM out-of-network
$2.50
$1.50
$2.50
$2
Non-sufficient funds (first)
Not applicable
Not applicable
$29
$19
Non-sufficient funds (additional)
Not applicable
Not applicable
$38
$19
Spring 2011 | CR80News | 13
The other value Higher One brings to schools is its “high-touch service model,” McGuane says. “Whereas some organizations provide some services we provide everything,” he adds. Sallie Mae
Is ATM access a difference maker? Enabling students the opportunity to withdraw their financial aid funds from an ATM without paying a fee is required by Title IV, the federal regulation that governs financial aid programs. Higher One and Heartland Campus Solutions have addressed the requirement by deploying a single ATM on campus and providing fee-free withdraws to refund recipients. But critics argue one ATM in the student union is hardly sufficient to serve an entire campus population throughout the year. It doesn’t truly meet student needs but rather the compliance needs of the campus. Students, they say, will likely be forced to use out-of-network ATMS and thus incur fees. Sallie Mae and Blackboard each provide cardholders with access to the surchargefree Allpoint ATM network. Allpoint enables fee-free withdraws across its nationwide network of 43,000 ATMs. Surcharge-free ATM networks charge the card issuer a fee to join and then extend free transactions to that issuer’s customer base. In essence, the cardholder’s future transaction fees are prepaid through the issuer’s network membership fee. Often smaller institutions such as credit unions, local banks or stored value card issuers join surcharge-free networks in order to compete against the larger banks with their deployed base of ATMs. Allpoint is the largest surcharge free network in the U.S. with 1 out of every 12 ATMs in its control. Locations are nationwide in leading retailers such as 7-Eleven, Costco, CVS, Kroger, Target and Walgreens.
14 | CR80News | Spring 2011
The long-time player in the refund management space has announced a new product for schools, a no-fee student checking account with a branded debit card, says Kelly Christiano, vice president of campus solutions and savings at Sallie Mae. For years, the Wilkes-Barre, Pa.-based company has offered ways for schools to handle financial aid refunds including a prepaid product. But this new offering includes more features. “This will enable a school to refund money and also offer a fully functional checking account,” she says. “It will be low cost and have some cutting edge features,” Christiano says. “We are very sensitive to high fees for students and want to make sure out products and services are better as well as low cost.” Sallie Mae doesn’t see itself competing with just other financial aid refund products, but other banks, Christiano says. “We want to be competitive in the payment space in regards to fees but also competitive in the banking space,” she says. “We think we need to be better and not just as good as our competition.” One of the biggest differentiators is the ATM access, Christiano says. Sallie Mae will offer free ATM transactions when student uses any of the 43,000 AllPoint ATMs across the U.S. Sallie Mae also isn’t charging for a replacement card if its lost or stolen. Students don’t have to have a Sallie Mae loan in order to use the product, but the school must use the company’s financial aid disbursal product, Christiano says. Students also have the option to have their financial aid deposited into another account or request a paper check. Sallie Mae won’t charge schools for the product but will make money off of the transaction fees merchants make when students use the card, she adds.
Blessing or curse for existing declining balance programs? Jones County Junior College has an interesting story to tell regarding the impact a financial aid solution can have on existing on-campus declining balance accounts. According to Jeff Staples, vice president of market development and strategy at Blackboard, this has been an area of particular concern for schools with an off-campus merchant program as they worried that a new card account could cannibalize deposits. In Jones County’s case, Staples says deposits to the Bobcat Bucks accounts tripled after the launch of the new financial aid solution. The school attributes the growth to peripheral impact that added awareness and buzz around the new program created.
Limestone College in Gafney, S.C. has been using Sallie Mae’s disbursal program and prepaid card since 2008, says April McAbee, associate director for student account at the school. “We were looking for an easier and better way to work with students,” she says. “We were sending out thousands of checks and they can get lost.” Sallie Mae has been easy to work with and its customer service has been quick to resolve any issues, McAbee says. “They offered us the program, no charge to the school and implementation went smoothly,” she says. The debit cards have enabled the student to have more freedom, McAbee says. The school gets the financial aid funds, uploads the funds around noon and the money is on the cards by 8 pm. When a student signs up for the card, Limestone administration walks him through how it works and the associated fees, McAbee says. Around 3,000 students at the school, about 90%, use the card.
The college hasn’t decided whether it will offer the new Sallie Mae checking account to its students, McAbee says. Blackboard When Blackboard rolled out BlackboardPay it had one mission: “This would absolutely be the best solution for the institution and the cardholder,” says Jeff Staples, vice president of market development and strategy at Blackboard. Blackboard executives felt that some of the financial aid refund products out there put too much of an onus on the cardholder, Staples says. “We are really focused on making this a solution without caveats, excuses or apologies,’” he says, “One that serves the institutions needs for Title IV compliant credit balance delivery without saddling the student with burdensome fees.” “There’s good and bad revenue,” he explains, “and counting on non-sufficient fund fees, charges for PIN debit transactions and out of network ATM fees coming out of financial aid credit balances is not good business. These students depend on every penny of that money to help pay their way through school.” Blackboard states that their only source of cardholder-related revenue is a portion of the merchant transaction fee (or interchange) for signature transactions. And this is paid by the merchant not the student. BlackboardPay is different from Higher One and the new Sallie Mae offering in that its product is a prepaid account, not a traditional checking account. It’s still FDIC insured but since it’s prepaid the student can only spend the funds available and cannot overdraft. Surcharge-free ATM access is another area of focus for Blackboard, Staples says. Students can access funds for free at any of AllPoint’s 43,000 ATMs, the same network used by Sallie Mae. BlackboardPay also deploys at least one free ATM on campus, explains Staples, to complement the Allpoint Network. BlackboardPay also offers fee-free check writing ability. Students call a number and receive pre-authorization, part of the process that prevents overdrafts. The Money Network check can then be used like any other check
and can also be cashed at any Walmart in the U.S. at no charge. Blackboard doesn’t charge the institution for the service, and provides the option of either a stand-alone companion card or to have
BlackboardPay integrated with the student ID. “Given the strict requirements for PCI compliance we developed an innovative way for the institution to provide real-time card issuance and activation without incurring the risks associated with handling banking information,”
Overdraft fees and the Reg E change The Federal Reserve Board approved a change to Reg E that eliminated a card issuer’s right to automatically cover overdrafts and subsequently charge a non-sufficient funds (NSF) fee on onetime debit card transactions and ATM withdraws. As of Aug. 15, 2010, banks can only perform the service and levy the fees if the account holder has opted-in requesting service. This change has been extremely detrimental to the revenue model for card issuing banks. Neither Higher One nor Sallie Mae opted to pursue the opt-in process, instead choosing to decline one-time debit and ATM transactions that would put the account into an overdrawn status. This eliminated a major area for potential account holder revenues. Prior to the Reg E change, about half of 18- to 25-year-olds incurred NSF fees in a given year. One-quarter incurred five or more each year. One-quarter incurred five or more each year. The most common transaction type to result in an NSF for this age group was POS/debit transactions accounting for more than 60%. With the effective removal of debit and ATM overdraft fees due to the Reg E change, nearly seven out of 10 opportunities for NSF fee collection was lost. (Note: The financial aid solutions from Blackboard and Heartland use prepaid cards so overdrafts are not possible and thus the regulatory change has no impact.)
Quantity of NSF fees by age group Age group
Zero
1 to 4
5 to 9
10 to 19
20 +
Under 18
78.1%
12.1%
4.0%
3.0%
2.7%
18-25
53.6%
21.5%
10.3%
7.9%
6.8%
26-61
68.1%
13.7%
6.1%
5.2%
6.9%
Over 62
87.8%
7.0%
2.2%
1.5%
1.5%
Age group
Check
ATM
Debit
ACH
Under 18
27.2%
10.1%
42.4%
13.0%
18-25
14.4%
8.0%
61.7%
8.7%
26-61
29.8%
7.8%
41.1%
14.5%
Over 62
46.0%
8.1%
23.2%
16.7%
NSF fees by transaction type
Source: FDIC Study of Bank Overdraft Programs, November 2008
Spring 2011 | CR80News | 15
Staples says. “Our clients can choose either method, or a mix of both, although 90% of our institutions have chosen to deploy the integrated card.” Jones County Junior College in Ellisville, Miss., launched BlackboardPay in August 2010. Previously the junior college had issued paper checks but now offers the card as an option for financial aid and student payroll, says Candi Smith, director of OneCard Services at the school. BlackboardPay has been integrated into Jones County’s campus ID and includes a Discover Card brand, Smith says. To maintain PCI compliance, the new student ID has two magnetic stripes on the back of the card, one for the school’s use and one for BlackboardPay. Deploying the new system involved recarding students who wanted to use the new service. Smith says she has recarded about 80% of the 5,500-student population. The impetus for offering students another option was staying a step ahead of Title IV compliance. Smith explains: “Of course we wanted a faster, safer method of disbursement for students. Of course we liked the idea of cost sav-
ings for the College. But we also were hearing from our Director of Financial Aid that electronic disbursement was being ‘encouraged’ by the Department Ed (and) because other federal disbursements have migrated to electronic methods, it seems foreseeable that the Department of Ed may mandate this option for students in the future.” Jones County is offering students the option to receive a paper check or use the BlackboardPay system, Smith says. The administration is extremely happy with BlackboardPay and the work it has eased. Though student reaction at first was mixed, acceptance has grown rapidly. Still, Smith notes, “some students like a paper check, even if you have to wait in line.” Heartland Campus Solutions Heartland Campus Solutions also offers a prepaid Discover card for its Acceluraid product, says Bill Norwood, director and chief architect at Heartland Campus Solutions. Acceluraid differentiates itself with how it works with students. Students receiving extra financial aid funds receive a card in the mail that they go online to activate. When the financial aid funds are
Professor: All financial aid refund systems have problems Bill Pratt’s job is to teach college kids about money. The teaching instructor in the College of Business at East Carolina University educates students on financial literacy and credit and debit cards. While East Carolina University uses Higher One for financial aid refunds, it’s not the only problem, Pratt says. “In some ways you can argue that they all take advantage of students,” he says. The fees charged to students will be paid over the life of the student loan, so $25 in fees can actually turn into close to $40, Pratt says. “You shouldn’t have to pay to use your own money,” he adds. Schools have a responsibility to educate students about the fees and the best ways to minimize them, Pratt says. Schools should provide examples of what the student will end up paying back if they don’t minimize the fees. For example, $100 in fees over 10 years will end up accruing almost $70 in interest. This information should be reviewed during a financial aid entrance interview, Pratt says. Information should also be sent to parents, as students can be overwhelmed when first starting college. A flyer in the mail isn’t good enough, Pratt says, they are not educational. 16 | CR80News | Spring 2011
available to the student they have the option of going online and transferring the money to another account at no charge. Alternatively, they can also use the Acceluraid account to access their funds. Heartland is keeping the fees associated with the accounts low, Norwood says. Charges for out of network ATM use is $1 and inactivity fee is $4 after 48 months. For each ACH deposit into the account the student gets a free electronic bill pay … otherwise, it’s just $1. As with Blackboard, since the account is prepaid it’s not possible to overdraft so there are no nonsufficient fund fees. Heartland makes money on the system through interchange, the fees charged to merchants when a student makes a transaction, Norwood says. They also charge the school an annual fee that equates to the amount the institution would have spent on postage and mailing of checks. North Central Missouri College is one of three schools that have deployed Acceluraid. The school was having problems with the time it was taking to issue paper checks, says Sharon Bennett, vice president of administrative services at the school. Checks would be send to incorrect addresses or take a lengthy time to arrive which created a need to put stop orders on old checks and reissue new ones. ACH presented another issue for the school, Bennett says, in that storing that personal data could make the school’s computer system attractive to hackers. NCMC was already a Heartland OneCard client and in January 2010 the school decided to go with Acceluraid. Students can now use the financial aid funds to make purchases on campus as well as off campus. The system has also been expanded so users can choose to have their student payroll deposited into the same account. “Since we’ve been using Acceluraid, our students are receiving their refunds an average of five to seven days earlier than they had been using the previous check system,” Barnett says. “Our administration has been able to save money on personnel costs, check issuance and reconciliation issues caused by delayed deliveries and lost or returned checks.”
Why all the fuss over a PIN-debit fee? Interchange isn’t chump change The key to understanding the controversy over Higher One’s $0.50 fee on PIN-debit transactions is found in the concept of interchange. Interchange is the fee that the merchant acquirer pays to the card issuer for its role in a payment transaction. Although the merchant acquirer pays the money initially, it is passed along to the merchant as a part of the total transaction fees. Interchange is by far the largest portion of the transaction fee. The payment card networks, for example Visa and MasterCard, establish the amounts via a complex set of variables. There are two types of debit transactions, PINbased – sometimes called online debit – and signature-based – sometimes called offline debit. When a consumer makes a transaction with a debit card, they are typically asked to choose “debit or credit,” at the point-of-sale. What they are actually choosing is PIN-debit or signature debit. Will you punch in your fourdigits or sign your name? The two options carry very different fee structures or interchange rates. PIN-debit, in general, benefits the merchant keeping the fees they pay to the consumer’s card issuing bank low. Signature-debit, on the other hand, costs the merchant more but results in higher returns to the issuing bank. This is considered the norm and holds true for the majority of transactions, though very small value transactions can cost the merchant less with signature debit. This is because PIN debit interchange is a flat fee regardless of transaction size while signature debit interchange is calculated as a percentage of the total transaction amount. Savvy merchants understand these thresholds and encourage consumers to enter their PIN for all but the smallest purchases. This results in more of the transaction amount actually showing up in their account. They do this by defaulting to the PIN option on the point-ofsale, offering cash back much like an ATM and making the signature option more burden-
some by requiring ID. Some merchants refuse signature transactions altogether though consumer demand has reduced this practice in recent years. Card issuers, on the other hand, often attempt to encourage cardholders to sign by offering reward points or incentives for signature debit but not for PIN-debit. How much are we talking? The Federal Reserve reported that the average interchange fee on a signature debit transaction was 56 cents or 1.53% of the transaction amount. The average PIN debit transaction resulted in interchange of 23 cents or .56% of the transaction’s dollar value. So on average the card-issuing bank receives 33 cents less with the cardholder enters the PIN. The banks do pay higher fees to the processing network for signature debit, but even with this included in the equation the net amount increases card issuer revenue by about 30 cents. It is important to note that most providers of the financial aid refund services are not the end issuers of the cards. Higher One, Blackboard and Heartland each have an issuing bank involved in the process. Thus there is some split of the interchange between the refund solution provider and their partner bank. Higher One’s PIN debit fee Higher One has taken a more proactive, though controversial, approach to encourage signature debit. The issuer charges its own cardholders if they don’t choose to sign. In essence Higher One is recouping – or likely increasing – the money they would have made from the merchant by assessing the cardholder fee. The company does attempt to educate cardholders and train them to avoid the fee. Online and in printed materials, cardholders are instructed to sign for purchases.
Still this 50-cent fee has helped to attract attention from newspaper columnists and financial talk show hosts, most railing about its unfair nature. Feds may make debate mute As part of the federal government’s move to reform the financial industry via regulation, a cap on debit card interchange has been proposed. The proposal is called the Durbin Amendment and it was an addition to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. The Durbin Amendment could limit the fees to just 12 cents for any institution with $10 billion or more in assets. While this asset level would exempt Higher One and most small to mid-sized institutions, many insiders suggest competitive pressures would force the adjustment of all interchange. Critics and banking industry groups suggest that this “gutting” of established revenue streams would ultimately hurt consumers, as institutions would be forced to recoup the losses from the account holders. The Federal Reserve reports it could result in $12 to $14 billion in lost issuer revenue each year. Analysts suggest it would likely lead to the end of free checking accounts, which in turn could force huge numbers of consumers to leave the banking system.
Spring 2011 | CR80News | 17
CR80News annual bank partner survey 2010 First significant slowdown occurs in campus card – financial institution links
2007
•
•
•
•
•
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
•
• • • •
• • •
•
•
• •
• • • • • •
•
• • • • •
•
•
• •
• • • • •
• • • •
•
• • • • •
•
Wells Fargo (39)
U.S. Bank (25)
TCF Bank (8)
SunTrust (7)
PNC Bank (7)
•
• • • • • • • • • •
• • • • • • • • • • •
•
• • • • •
•
• •
• •
•
2009 • •
18 | CR80News | Spring 2011
• • •
•
• •
A word to describe the state of campus banking relationships in 2010 is stagnation. According to CR80News’ latest survey of financial institutions, the number of campus card and bank partnerships remained virtually unchanged from 2009 to 2010.
2 2 4 3 3 5 2 3 3 3 1 3 6 4 3 4 2 1 1 4 1 4 4 2 3 3 3 3 1 2 2 2 3 3 4 2 3 4 1 3 4 4 2 3 1 4 3 1 4 3
Overall growth in 2010 was less than five percent, by far the smallest increase since 2003 when CR80News first surveyed the financial institutions that actively work with higher education to offer banking services as a part of the campus card program (note: only relationships that integrate the official university-issued ID card as a banking card are considered for the survey). From that first survey, five institutions have been active providers of these services via campus cards. PNC Bank, TCF Bank, U.S. Bank, Wachovia and Wells Fargo account for more than 80% of the partnerships identified. The acquisition of Wachovia by Wells Fargo completed last year, reducing the “Big 5” to the “Big 4.” It also firmly cemented U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo as the top two players in the campus card/banking market with nearly 65% of relationships in their control.
Bank partnerships: 2003 -2010 comparison
5050
Commerce Heartland/CNB
45
PNC Bank SunTrust TCF Bank
4040
U.S. Bank Wells Fargo
35
3030 Commerce
Quantity
Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hamp. New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin2008 Wyoming
CNB/Heartland (50)
Commerce (5)
States served by financial partners
Heartland/CNB
25
PNC Bank SunTrust TCF Bank U.S. Bank
2020
Wells Fargo
15
1010
5
0
0
2010
2003 2003
2005 2005
2006 2006
2007 2007
2008 2008
2009 2009
2010 2010
But despite the Wells Fargo and Wachovia combo, U.S. Bank managed to hold onto a slim lead in total number of partnerships. The tandem of Heartland Campus Solutions and Central National Bank & Trust (CNB) almost doubled the number of relationships jumping 89% from nine to 17 in 2009. In 2010, it maintained healthy growth, adding five more client institutions for a 29% increase. Both U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo added one additional number to their total. Wells Fargo kept all its campus clients from the 2009 survey while adding just one, while U.S. Bank lost five prior clients but added six to its roster. The aggregate number of schools served among the seven banks surveyed jumped just seven or 5% in 2010. That compares to a year over year increases of nearly 20% in both 2008 and 2009. This is the second year that TCF’s numbers dropped. In 2009, the bank fell from 11 to eight campus clients, and in 2010 the bank
Bank partnerships: 2009 -2010 comparison Bank
2009 total
2010 total
% change
Commerce
4
3
-25%
Heartland/CNB
17
22
29%
PNC Bank
15
17
13%
SunTrust
3
3
0%
TCF Bank
8
6
-25%
U.S. Bank
46
47
2%
Wells Fargo
42
43
2%
135
141
4%
Total
lost another two clients leaving it with six. One of the clients, Northern Michigan University, left TCF for a partnership with Wells Fargo. Commerce Bank lost one school, falling from four to three when Wichita State opted to discontinue the banking option on its campus card. PNC’s acquisition and integration of National City Bank in 2008 hasn’t yet been felt but the
purchase did enable “us to nearly double our retail presence across 15 states and create new opportunities to grow university banking at PNC,” says Nickolas Certo, PNC’s senior vice president, university banking. Wells Fargo’s banking footprint still covers 39 states while U.S. Bank serves campus card clients in 25 states, one more with the addition of New Mexico. TCF, PNC, Commerce and SunTrust have far smaller footprints ranging from
five to eight states. The relevance is that banks can only offer campus card partnerships in those states in which they have a retail bank presence. Was it the economy? The economy might have had an effect on the slow growth rate in 2010, but new bank regulations likely had an even greater impact. Don Becker, Commerce Bank assistant vice president, student banking & university cards, believes “regulatory threats are a much greater concern when exploring these partnerships. I think regulatory changes are the greatest threat to on-campus banking partnerships,” he adds. The impact of these new regulations “is likely to be entirely negative and many banks’ debit card income could be eliminated,” says Becker.
Whitney Bright, vice president, general manager, U.S. Bank, agrees that regulatory reform is affecting campus/bank relationships. “Like other banks, we are in the process of assessing the impact of recent regulatory shifts. We believe that there are likely to be changes in how banks approach campus banking partnerships,” she says. Fred Emery, vice president and general manager, Heartland Campus Solutions, believes that because of the publicity about credit card reform and the fees some banks charge, “this concern has caused some campuses to move slower before adding a banking relationship to their card program.” One bank sees the new regulations as an opportunity. “It has been a difficult environment for several years, but now schools are facing an almost unprecedented economic challenge,” says PNC’s Certo. “In many ways, this has made more schools than ever open to introducing a university banking program on their campus.”
Campuses with bank partnerships (2010) Indiana University of Pennsylvania, PA
Henderson State University, AR
California State Univ – San Francisco, CA
Marymount University, VA
Iowa State University, IA
California State University – Stanislaus, CA
Commerce (3)
Mercyhurst College, PA
John Carroll University, OH
Clark Atlanta University, GA
Fort Hays State University, KS
Mount St. Mary’s University, MD
Johnson County Community College, KS
El Paso Community College, TX
Pittsburg State University, KS
Penn State University – 18 campuses, PA
Kirkwood Community College, IA
Elon University, NC
The University of Kansas, KS
St. Joseph’s University, PA
Metropolitan State College of Denver, CO
Fayetteville State University, NC
University of Cincinnati, OH
Milwaukee Area Technical College, WI
Florida A&M University, FL
Heartland/CNB (22)
University of Delaware, DE
Minnesota State University – Moorhead, MN
Front Range Community College, CO
Bastyr University, WA
University of Pennsylvania, PA
Missouri Baptist University, MO
Georgia Perimeter College, GA
Clearwater Christian College, FL
University of Pittsburgh, PA
Missouri Western State University, MO
Guilford College, NC
Morehead State University, KY
Mercer University, GA
New campuses in 2010 added in red.
College of the Holy Cross, MA Colorado Christian University, CO
SunTrust (3)
North Dakota State University, ND
Mesa State College, CO
Concordia University of Wisconsin, WI
Florida State University, FL
Northern Kentucky University, KY
Midwestern State University, TX
Harrisburg University, PA
Mary Baldwin College, VA
Northwest Missouri State University, MO
Minnesota State Univ – Mankato, MN
Hillsborough Community College, FL
University of Central Florida, FL
Northwestern University, WI
New Mexico State University, NM
Pacific University, OR
North Carolina State University, NC
Florida Coastal School of Law, FL John Carroll University, OH
TCF Bank (6)
Saint Louis University, MO
North Carolina A&T State University, NC
Lebanon Valley College, PA
Eastern Michigan University, MI
San Diego State University, CA
North Carolina Central University, NC
Manhattan College, NY
Northern Illinois University, IL
San Jose State University, CA
Northern Michigan University, MI
Mississippi Delta Community College, MS
St. Cloud State University, MN
Seattle University, WA
Riverside Community College District, CA
Mount Holyoke College, MA
University of Illinois, IL
Southwest Minnesota State Univ, MN
Texas A&M University – College Station, TX
North Central Missouri College, MO
University of Michigan, MI
St. Cloud Technical College, MN
Texas A&M University – Corpus Christie, TX
Northwest Florida State College, FL
University of Minnesota, MN
Thomas More College, KY
Texas State University – San Marcos, TX
Truman State University, MO
University of Arizona, AZ
Palm Beach Atlantic University, FL Pittsburgh Technical Institute, PA
U.S. Bank (47)
University of California Davis, CA
University of Florida, FL
Reinhardt College, GA
Austin Peay State University, TN
University of Central Missouri, MO
University of Nebraska – Kearney, NE
Slippery Rock University, PA
Benedictine University, IL
University of San Diego, CA
University of Nebraska – Lincoln, NE
Tompkins Cortland Community College, NY
California State University – Fullerton, CA
University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire, WI
University of Nevada – Las Vegas, NV
University of Massachusetts Lowell, MA
California State Univ – San Bernardino, CA
University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, WI
University of Nevada – Reno, NV
Waukesha County Technical College, WI
Capital University, OH
Washington State University, WA
University of N.C. – Chapel Hill, NC
Carroll University, WI
Waukesha County Technical College, WI
University of N.C. – Greensboro, NC
PNC Bank (17)
Case Western Reserve University, OH
Wisconsin Lutheran College, WI
University of North Texas, TX
Allegheny College, PA
Central Washington University, WA
Xavier University, OH
University of Northern Colorado, CO
Arcadia University, PA
College of Mt. St. Joseph, OH
Carnegie Mellon University, PA
Colorado State University – Pueblo, CO
Wells Fargo (43)
University of Texas – Brownsville, TX
DePaul University, IL
Concordia University Chicago, IL
Baylor University TX
University of Texas – Dallas, TX
Duquesne University, PA
Creighton University, NE
California State University – East Bay, CA
University of Texas – El Paso, TX
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, PA
Drury University, MO
California State University – Los Angeles, CA
Villanova University, VA
Grove City College, PA
Gonzaga University, WA
California State University – Sacramento, CA
Virginia Commonwealth University, TX
20 | CR80News | Spring 2011
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With off-campus programs, more can be better Programs flourish when multiple campuses share merchant network
example of how one card can be used on campus at multiple institutions as well as at a shared network of off-campus merchants. In addition to the six Fenway schools, CardSmith also serves five other campuses in the Boston area, says Donna Franklin, CardSmith’s vice president marketing and communications. The Colleges of the Fenway’s card is a shared service program. The interoperability is communicated to students as a service for their convenience, says Franklin. While each school offers a different ID, each will work in a single terminal at the merchant location.
Just a few short years ago, allowing a university’s campus card to be used off campus was a no-no. Fears about losing precious on-campus income to merchants surrounding the campus prevented many universities from taking the step. But as Jason Tiede, director of Blackboard’s off-campus program, BbOne, says they now have become the norm. “It’s unique if you don’t have one. Besides, students want it. They want the expanded services, such as late night dining, weekend offerings, delivery and gas. It’s not so much they want something that’s physically away from campus, they want those services that a school otherwise couldn’t provide on its own.” While there’s no hard evidence to show that schools with an off-campus program have a competitive advantage over nearby schools that don’t, it has become a nice selling point for campus card vendors. In addition, a vendor with an already established off-campus program in an area may find it easier to recruit other schools to join. That’s why off-campus programs are now part of many campus card vendors’ menu of services and other companies are offering programs regardless of which vendor provides the college’s campus card. Off Campus Solutions (OCS) provides off campus programs for more than 60 campuses, 22 | CR80News | Spring 2011
regardless of campus card provider, says Greg Baker, president and chief technology officer at the company. OCS is a subsidiary of Sodexo Campus Services. Sodexo manages on-campus dining and facilities services at more than 800 colleges and universities. Baker says that OCS supplies off campus programs to institutions with or without a Sodexo partnership though the majority of clients are Sodexo customers. Schools are going off campus because students want the option and it can bring in revenue to the school, says Baker. Participating merchants like it because they obtain access to funds they may not have had access to in the past. Campus card provider, CardSmith, serves multiple schools in several areas and the campus cards are all interoperable. As long as the merchant has the point-of-sale terminal and the campus has the CardSmith program in place it will work, explains Brian Farley, CardSmith’s vice president of business development. “So if you’re a Boston merchant and you have a terminal and you’re around the corner from say Berklee College of Music, that single terminal will also accept ID cards from other campuses in the area,” he says. CardSmith’s best-known multi-school operation is the six-college consortium in Boston called Colleges of the Fenway. It is an ideal
“When we have all those campuses in a given geographic area, it’s easier to sign up other schools,” explains Franklin. “With Campus Cash, each new campus we add automatically has access to our entire off-campus network.” CardSmith also supports a multi-campus community in Jacksonville, Fla. providing services to the University of North Florida, Jacksonville University and Florida State College of Jacksonville. It’s obviously more efficient for merchants, campus card providers and the universities to enable merchants to accept multiple cards. “How many acceptance posters can you put up?” asks Franklin. “With Campus Cash, you only need one.” Executives for both CBORD and Blackboard agree. “Having business relationships already in place between a local campus and merchant community make the conversations with nearby campuses easier,” says BbOne’s Tiede. CBORD has successfully leveraged the strength of its off campus program to get new schools with a focus on ‘off campus’ to install CBORD’s one card solution, says Shawn McCarthy, CBORD’s vice president for wide area commerce. “We’ve had some good take-aways from competitors,” he adds. Another plus is having corporate partnerships with national chains like CVS and Chipotle. “We can leverage our relationships with national chains to very quickly bring off campus
services to the university community,” says Blackboard’s Tiede. Both CBORD and Blackboard got into off-campus programs by buying established companies. A wholly owned subsidiary of CBORD is Off Campus Advantage, which was purchased in 2007. “(It) services all CBORD schools for off campus requirements,” says McCarthy. While the company has some 800 schools under its campus card umbrella, just 90 so far use Off Campus Advantage, says McCarthy. Some of CBORD’s multiple accounts include Boston, Washington, D.C., Texas, California and Minneapolis. “The largest concentration is in the northeast. The largest are the SUNY (State University of New York) schools,” adds McCarthy. BbOne, Blackboard’s off-campus management solution, came about from the company’s purchase of Student Advantage’s SACash offering in 2003. With that purchase came 24 universities, which jump-started Blackboard’s off-campus program. There are about 500 institutions that utilize Blackboard Transact and of those, about 100 use BbOne, says Tiede. BbOne has multiple accounts in five areas. Overlapping areas include Andover, Mass. (Phillips Andover and Merrimack College), Fairfield, Conn. (Fairfield University and Sacred Heart University), Atlanta, Ga. (Clark Atlanta University, Georgia Tech, and Georgia State University), Claremont Calif. (Claremont Consortium), and Greensboro, N.C. (High Point U and Guilford College), says Tiede. Campus card providers agree that the number of colleges offering off-campus capabilities will continue to grow as will the number of merchants seeking access to the college crowd. “If I’m going to open a restaurant, one thing I’ve learned: open it next to a college,” McCarthy says.
IRS
IRS demands new reporting for off-campus merchant programs New IRS regulation are catching some college campuses by surprise as campuses will be required to file more information regarding offcampus merchant programs. IRS Form 1099-K, Merchant Card and Third Party Network Payments, will be required from universities in order to report payments to merchants associated with off-campus programs. This new reporting was mandated by the Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008 and is intended to ensure that businesses accurately report their income from payment card transactions. The regulation doesn’t impact the amount of taxes the schools or merchants will pay but the IRS is collecting the information for research on these types of transactions. The new regulations take effect this year and will require campuses and vendors to provide tax information to the IRS for the 2011 tax year. The National Association of College and University Business Offices warns campuses to look at off-campus programs and be aware of the new regulation. The group says a college or university is required to file Form 1099-K if it operates a campus card program under which: • The card is accepted by one or more merchants not related to the institution. • The institution is contractually obligated to pay participating merchants in settlement of transactions with cardholders. One wrinkle … if a campus card program is outsourced to a bank or third party and it makes the payments to the merchants, that entity would be the one required to file the Form 1099-K. For example, campuses that use Blackboard’s BBOne or CardSmith’s off-campus program don’t have to worry about filing the reports because the company is required to handle it on their behalf. BbOne was already collecting this data and providing it to merchants online, says Jason Tiede, director of BbOne. The new regulation has required BbOne to change the format of its report and track down Tax Identification
Numbers for merchants but otherwise not much has to change. CardSmith is in a similar situation and will have to make only minor changes to its administrative processes, says Jay Summerall, president and founder of the campus card provider. “They way we’re set up it’s not hard too do but for others it may be tough,” he says. If a school is running its own off-campus program, Summerall says, “it may be tougher because they have to invent a new process.” The final IRS rule specifically cited a campus card example. If a school issues a card that is used to purchase items at merchants related to the campus, no information needs to be reported to the IRS. But if the student uses the card to buy lunch at a local restaurant unrelated to the university, that type of transaction needs to be reported, the rule states. While the reporting may seem like a lot of work, it won’t impact all merchants, Tiede says. A merchant must conduct 200 transactions per year and it must total at least $20,000 for the rule to apply. Schools that outsource their bookstores and food services will also be impacted even they don’t have an off-campus card program, Summerall says. The National Association of College and University Business Offices says the following information needs to be included on Form 1099-K: • Name, address, and Taxpayer Identification Number of each participating merchants to whom reportable payment transactions were made during the calendar year. • The gross amount of reportable payment transactions for the calendar year. • The gross amount of aggregate payment transactions by month, this breakdown is required in order to make it easier to reconcile the amounts by fiscal year. • The name, telephone number, and Federal Identification Number of the payment settlement entity filing the form.
Spring 2011 | CR80News | 23
WiFi locks enable easy to deploy security at Quinnipiac University Hamden, Conn.-based Quinnipiac University has experienced steady growth in recent years which necessitated expansion beyond its main campus. This expansion comes with the need to provide additional security for university personnel, as well as the nearly 8,000 students that live in campus residence halls. Securing buildings located in remote off-campus locations can be a challenge for a school’s facilities department. Quinnipiac overcame this by installing WiFi-enabled locksets from Sargent Manufacturing, one of the brands of ASSA ABLOY. “Even though we expanded outside the main campus, we wanted to provide the same level of doorway security that the main campus enjoys,” said Keith Woodward, director of facilities at Quinnipiac. Quinnipiac has a more than 30-year relationship with Sargent and ASSA ABLOY. All residence halls and academic buildings on the main campus are secured with Sargent Passport 1000 PG offline locks that operate with Quinnipiac’s Q-Card student ID program. The locking system’s Persona Campus software enables the university to set access privileges on all campus buildings and track lock usage with an audit trail feature. Facility personnel wanted to offer this same access control to 400 doors on off-campus buildings without having to send out a technician anytime a lock required enrollment updates. A solution was available in the new SARGENT Passport 1000 P2 lockset that connects wirelessly to the school’s security network. Using an existing WiFi network, the Passport 1000 P2 connects as often or as little as specified to maintain its local list of up to 2,400 users. The locks communicate to the host server or access control panel via an open-standard 802.11 b/g WiFi network. “This technology allowed us to implement online access control by simply tapping into our existing WiFi network,” Woodward explained. “The Sargent locks with Persona Campus software fully integrate with our campus card system and achieve cohesive, university-wide doorway security.”
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With the new locks, Quinnipiac was able to simplify management of their off-campus access control so it can be used with campus IDs. In addition to opening their doors, the cards are used for meals, laundry, vending machines, copy machines, checking out books and equipment, and accessing the fitness center. There is also an off-campus program and the cards are accepted by a number of local merchants.
Card systems key to campus security By Cindy McCall, Vice President of Marketing, The CBORD Group, Inc. The arena of campus security technology has a vast array of platforms and peripherals to choose from. Analog and IP cameras, all the way to logical and physical security which includes intrusion detection, access control, and mass notification systems – all these and many more span under this enormous security umbrella. In 2011, however, more universities will come to recognize another solution as a key component in a holistic campus security program: the campus card system. In the early days of the campus card industry, card operations fell largely in the realm of dining services, used mainly for tracking meal plan usage and, of course, identification. As systems evolved and features like discretionary purchases, vending, copying and printing, and the like were added to card programs, many card operations began to move into departments like business services, residence life and facilities. Meanwhile, access control and alarm management were handled by security departments, often with separate software and little or no communication with the card system. Today, the reach of campus card systems extends into every aspect of campus life and beyond. Security has become a much more important aspect of the systems with the many robust features they provide. For example, when a robbery is reported in a residence hall, security personnel immediately look to the card system to determine the identity of the cardholder that gained access to the unauthorized area. When integrated with surveillance cameras, the cardholder’s picture may be easily verified and compared to the video for a positive identification of the perpetrator. In areas where loitering, forgotten items, or theft is a concern, intelligent video solutions provide excellent means to become proactive instead of reactive. As we enter 2011, this trend will continue and the importance of card systems in enhancing security programs will be recognized by even more universities. More than a system for tracking meal plans and discretionary dollars, a full-featured card system empowers security officers to make informed decisions in a timely fashion. Campus card employees should keep the lines of communication with security departments open – this partnership is becoming more important than ever.
Kevin Duncan • 925 686 7009 • kevin.duncan@wellsfargo.com Stephen Nixon • 415 547 3142 • stephen.a.nixon@wellsfargo.com Vernon Sloan • 704 840 9986 • vernon.sloan@wellsfargo.com
Visitor management crucial to physical security Systems catching on from Fortune 500s to Major League Baseball Andy Williams Associate Editor, AVISIAN Publications Security checks have become a fact of life for entrance to public buildings. As government agencies, corporations and schools struggle to keep track of individuals within their facilities at any point in time, a new breed of visitor management systems has risen to the top. Though it may be more apparent today, visitor management is not a new function. For as long as organizations have sought to control access to facilities, there has been a need to manage visitors, vendors and other non-recurring guests. In the past, paper-based logs were managed by lobby attendants to ensure visitors had a legitimate reason to enter. Today’s electronic solutions automate these functions adding convenience and robust new security features to the process. There are a number of different visitor management solutions on the market. Some are available as a part of enterprise-level solutions while others are off-the-shelf software products. Regardless of the solution, it should enable better control over access to facilities and automate the visitor entry and exit process. Upon check-in, a badge should be printed on-the-spot for use by the visitor. And after the fact, the electronic visitor logs should be able to be queried for reporting purposes. The products can improve the first impression a visitor forms of the organization as well as improve both employee and visitors safety. When evaluating visitor management solutions, there are many features to consider including ability to: • Integrate with other systems within the organization such as human resources or access control 26 | CR80News | Spring 2011
• Check external databases for such as sex offender and terrorist watch lists • Design custom badges within the application • Capture photos via driver license scan or digital camera • Automate data entry by scanning driver licenses or business cards • Print on paper labels and plastic cards • Print on self-expiring materials to make it easy to spot old badges • Validate badges electronically via bar codes or other ID technologies • Incorporate self-service check-in via kiosks • Automatic host email notification upon visitor check-in • Automate non-disclosure agreement signature process • Include time and attendance functions for staff. Baseball teams take a cut at visitor management Two U.S. professional baseball teams – the Seattle Mariners and the Cleveland Indians – were trying to get a better handle on the people entering their facilities. “We wanted a more professional appearance at the front desk so we could track who’s coming in,” explains David R. Powell, senior director of information systems for the Cleveland Indians. “We wanted to move away from handwritten ID stickers,” he says. “We were looking for a canned package.” In addition to visitor tracking, the Indians also wanted to use the system with internal staff. “We needed a system to produce employee IDs
because the one we were using in-house was developed some ten-years earlier and it was just too cumbersome,” explains Powell. But the most important reason for the solution was the Indians’ need to track the vendors who visited the ball club often on a daily basis. They wanted to automate the paper-based sign in process being used to keep track of vendors. With an electronic version, the Indians could easily check to see when a specific vendor – an electrician, for example – was last in. But more importantly, it enabled system operators to store individual records in a database and easily replicate a new badge the next time the vendor arrived. “We have a lot of visitors and on any given day maybe 20 outside contractors. So we needed something to keep track of who was in the building at any one time,” Powell says. “In a two-week period we have about 300 visitor entries.” The Indians chose Lobby Track, a visitor management solution from San Carlos, Calif.based Jolly Technologies. “We found Jolly and we liked what we saw,” says Powell. Named after its founder and CEO, Sandeep Jolly, the company got its start a decade ago producing bar code label products. In 2003
Jolly released its Print Studio solution to produce bar code labels, but the program also gained acceptance in the ID card market due to those same bar code capabilities. This led them to develop ID Flow and Lobby Track, the company’s people-tracking solution, in 2008. Jolly’s biggest customers can be found in the defense industry, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, retail, and now even baseball teams, says Kurt Bell, Jolly’s vice president of sales and marketing. The company is also seeing a need for its technology in other areas, including schools and college campuses. For the Seattle Mariners, Lobby Track was the next logical step to secure its facilities. “We were already using ID Flow, Jolly’s badgemaking program,” says Erik Hackmann, security supervisor for the Mariners. “We wanted something that would integrate with it.” He explains that they wanted to use the badging database as part of the company’s host lookup. “When a visitor comes in he has to have a host, someone in the organization that is their sponsor. We have a database of people who are authorized to be hosts,” says Hackmann. “You can look up the host and when an expected visitor arrives it can send an email that the visitor is here,” explains Bell. Like the Indians, the Mariners consider everybody that’s not an employee to be a visitor. “The Mariners did 8,000 visitors last year,” Hackmann says. “Right now, we’re in the off season so most are contractors who are doing all of our projects. We’re remodeling parts of the ballpark and everyone has to have a badge. We’re averaging between 40-50 a day,” says Hackmann. Robust features take visitor management systems beyond badging solutions
Many organizations choose to produce guest badges using light-sensitive paper that darkens over time due to the chemical reaction produced by the thermal printing process used to produce the badges. This enables badges more than a day old to be visibly identified if they are reused for entry.
Lobby Track has the ability to check visitors against terrorist watch lists and, particularly important for schools, sexual offender databases, Bell says. Many organizations choose to produce guest badges using light-sensitive paper that darkens over time due to the chemical reaction produced by the thermal printing process
used to produce the badges. This enables badges more than a day old to be visibly identified if they are reused for entry to facilities. Most solutions enable both paper badges and plastic IDs to be produced. “If you’re going to be in seven times a year or more, we’ll issue a plastic badge, (but) temporary visitors get a paper badge,” says Powell. Lobby Track automates data entry by scanning a guest’s driver license or business card. Information can be entered manually, if need be, and a Web cam is used to take a photo. “In most cases I take a new photo of everyone rather than use the driver license photo,” says Powell. “We recently upgraded to the Enterprise version so we can run it here in Cleveland as well as at our spring training facility in Goodyear, Ariz.,” says Powell. Lobby Track’s Enterprise version is “faster and better suited to working in multiple locations,” he adds. Adding applications and markets Because of its tracking ability, Jolly’s software is useable in other venues, such as event tracking, lab access or even school attendance, says Bell. While visitor management could work with universities, it’s not an easy market to crack. “The university market has been very difficult for visitor management, primarily because campuses are wide open,” says Bell. “To do it effectively you need to have a single entrance point, and students would have to have a noticeable ID in plain sight.” But the K-12 market is different. “It’s more widely used,” says Bell. “Campuses aren’t as big and you have to get your badge at the office before proceeding on campus.” And it’s easy to distinguish adults from students, which is why K-12 students don’t need a visible badge. Tracking software like Jolly’s is pretty much a behind-the-scenes product that, if it does its job, no one knows it’s even there. As the Indians’ Powell put it: “Visitor management isn’t the most high profile thing out there. It simply works so we can worry about the things that are more important.”
Spring 2011 | CR80News | 27
University of Virginia dorms go with wireless, modular locks New systems brings flexibility for physical access control The University of Virginia was looking for a door locking system that would give it the flexibility to mix and match, something modular that would make changes easy and less expensive. Wireless was another option the university wanted. Thanks to Ingersoll Rand and its partnership with CBORD, the university’s campus card provider, UVA was able to make that happen. “We wanted a wireless solution so we didn’t have to wire dormitories,” says Gary Conley, facilities and systems engineer for UVA, a 19,000-student institution located in Charlottesville. “When we first started the process a couple years ago nothing met our criteria.” The university wanted something that would work in a college environment. “It’s different than a corporate environment,” says Conley. “Dorms are higher security. We’re protecting residents, not just controlling access.” UVA was also looking for a system that had PIN pads and could be remotely locked down, says Conley. UVA requires dual authentication, swiping a card and entering a PIN, for a door to unlock. “The products we looked at either didn’t have keypads, they weren’t online or they couldn’t be locked down remotely.” Enter the AD-Series locks from Schlage, one of Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies’ companies. The AD-Series offers a range of modular locks and the AD-400 model is wireless, says Tom Wright, sales consultant for Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies. All the AD-Series models are modular so to parts can just be swapped out for newer ones. “The unique thing about the AD series is all these options are in the same form factor, so a customer can start off with offline then decide to move to wireless. You’re not replacing the entire lockset – only a component,” says Read Winkelman, CBORD’s vice president of sales. The product line also makes it easier to move from a magnetic stripe card to a contactless smart card because you only have to replace the card reader, says Winkelman. The university first became aware of the AD-400 when it was tagged to test out the locking system. “CBORD knew UVA was interested in this product and they came to us,” says Conley. “It sounded like the AD-400 met all the university’s needs including dual authentication and real time lock-down.”
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Ingersoll Rand first needed some feedback. When the university began testing the system, its first suggestion involved whether the card should be swiped, like a credit card, or inserted into the reader, similar to the way cards are used today to open hotel room doors. “We wanted a swipe card reader,” says Conley. “Some students carry their card on a lanyard. We wanted them to be able to use their card without taking it off the lanyard.” This necessitated some design changes. “We had a different card reader on the initial design,” recalls Wright. “It was important for UVA to require dual authentication to open a door with a card and a PIN. What wasn’t working well was the design on the magnetic stripe reader since it had to be inserted into the lock.” The first units were installed last summer and the school now has about 210 going into dormitories and about 175 into academic buildings. UVA uses multiple models from the AD-Series. “We have the AD-200, a stand-alone battery operated lock and we also use the AD-300 which involves minimal wiring. The AD-400, which connects into UVA’s card system, is a wireless implementation,” explains Conley. One consideration for stand-alone, unconnected devices is that you have to visit each lock to program it, using a PDA or some kind of handheld device. “Anytime you have a problem with the lock or when a resident moves out you have to physically visit the lock,” says Wright. With a wireless system, everything can be managed from the host computer. One key advantage to the AD-400 is what Ingersoll Rand calls its “Wake up on Radio,” a battery saving technique. “The lock goes to sleep until you do something to wake it up,” Wright says.
Campus card programs: Dramatic innovation needed By Taran Lent, Vice President of Product Development and CoFounder, CardSmith Campus card programs continue to grow in scale and scope. Once just simple systems used to administer meal plans, campus card programs are becoming more and more complex financial instruments accepted for payments everywhere on and around campus, and even online. Correspondingly, the cost to deploy and manage mission critical campus card systems is ever increasing. Not to mention that the regulatory, security and redundancy requirements are also becoming increasingly onerous. Congress is taking unprecedented steps to further regulate the payment industry, and one has to wonder how this may ultimately impact Campus Cards. Despite these trends, campus card programs still bring meaningful operating efficiencies to educational institutions by eliminating cash handling, reducing labor costs, consolidating reporting, increasing security and more. The next big milestone in the campus card industry must be to discover and realize dramatic cost efficiencies and service improvements by utilizing next generation web-enabled technologies and business models. Eight Predictions for 2011: 1. Web-based technologies and cloud computing will continue to accelerate innovation while reducing capital and administrative costs. 2. Federal regulation of debit card programs will increase and Congress may ultimately mandate rules specifically for the campus card industry.
In some technologies waking the lock up can take a little more time than you’d like. “With Wake Up on Radio, you communicate with the lock very quickly, almost instantly,” says Wright.
3. Campus card systems developers and manufacturers will more aggressively adopt global payment standards, giving end users more choice and flexibility while also enabling increased collaboration and integration between service providers.
Ingersoll Rand’s long-time partnership with CBORD helped a lot in rolling out the new system, says Winkelman. “We had a substantial amount of input. Ingersoll Rand views the education market as a primary market for this platform and they wanted us to have a say,” adds Winkelman. “The partnership also provides valuable integrations that improve efficiency for users,” he says.
4. Point-of-sales terminal technologies will keep getting better, faster and cheaper.
“The integration between the AD-Series and CS Gold makes it easy to manage a variety of locking solutions from a single interface,” says Winkelman. “Our goal is to give our customers lots of options and let them determine the right fit for their campuses.” Contactless smart cards are also on UVA’s radar. It’s already in use in some academic areas, but it has been talked about for use in the dorms as well, says Conley. 30 | CR80News | Spring 2011
5. Wireless networks will evolve to the point that they provide a secure, PCI compliant alternative to transmitting financial information over school networks. 6. Social media will make it easier than ever before to communicate with cardholders and leverage campus card programs to deliver relevant and valuable offers from accepting locations. 7. Adoption of contactless technologies for consumer payments will continue to underperform expectations. Magstripe cards will endure and prevail again as the preferred payment technology in 2011. However, contactless will thrive for access and security related solutions. 8. More companies will develop and offer financial aid disbursement solutions as part of their standard product/service mix.
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Comprehensive Solutions. Innovative Products. Dedicated Service. The CBORD Group, Inc. • 61 Brown Road, Ithaca, NY 14850 • 607.257.2410 • FAX: 607.257.1902 • www.cbord.com
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