Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Multicard announced the launch of polypurse, an Internet-based platform for managing the cashless payment functions of its Swiss ID card for campus environments. The company’s polyright card serves as an all-in-one ID credential for payment, building access, library privileges, locker or bike rental and a wide array of other applications.
This new online platform offers the ability to manage cash functions of the card, in addition to extra features and convenience, including online account management and reporting, for the tens of thousands of student and employee cardholders at universities across Switzerland.
With polypurse, cardholders can perform a range of cash card management operations online, including checking account balances, verifying transactions and re-loading the card with cash value via a bank account or credit card.
In addition, polypurse enables cardholders to securely access value-added local services such as Mobility CarSharing for short-term city car rental and velopass for bike rental.
This has been quite the year for near field communication. The hype around the technology has skyrocketed and enabled handsets are actually being sold in the U.S. In a handful of locations, these handsets can be used for purchases and other transactions.
NFC is not a brand new technology. Millions of handsets are deployed in Japan but the hype around the technology in western countries has grown deafening. Until this year it had been all talk as handset manufacturers, telecoms and banks tried to figure out a way to make NFC a reality. But with RIM enabling two Blackberry devices, Samsung's Nexus S and Google Wallet and Offers NFC has already become a reality to some with more slated in 2012.
For payment industry veterans, the hype around NFC may be reminiscent of the push for contact smart cards more than a decade ago. Visa USA was a driving force behind the issuance of these cards and touted how they would revolutionize marketing and loyalty programs.
It was an exciting proposition. Multiple retailers could create loyalty applications that could be stored on the same card. Frequency programs, electronic couponing, one-time offers all could be enabled with a contact smart card program.
Visa lined up a handful of issuers but Target bought into it the most, issuing 9 million cards and swapping out 37,000 point-of-sale devices, according to published reports.
Of all the exciting new loyalty programs Target could offer, they chose to roll out electronic couponing. There were a handful of ways an electronic couponing program could have worked:
Of all these options the latter is arguably the most difficult as it requires consumers to change behavior. In 2001 nobody was using a kiosk to download offers before starting to shop. They still aren't in 2011.
Yet this is the option that Target chose for its loyalty program. It did not catch on with cardholders. In 2004 just one year after switching all of its point-of-sales terminals, Target ceased issuing smart cards.
It's now 2011 and Visa is once again the force behind an issuer and retailer technology migration. For the switch to NFC and EMV, the message is slightly different with added security receiving top billing. Marketing, however, is not far behind.
When Google announced Wallet, security was highlighted because a PIN is required before payment data is transmitted. Yet while security was highlighted, as much time was spent explaining Google Offers, the location-based system that will notify consumers of deals in their areas.
But the biggest problem still exists as it did a decade ago; convincing retailer's to switch their point-of-sales devices to accept these new payment types. The problem isn't as large as it was in the last decade as an estimated 10% of all point-of-sales systems shipped in 2010 included contactless and that number is expected to grow to 85% by 2016, according to ABI Research. This doesn't include the contactless payment terminals already deployed in the U.S. either.
Visa is offering a carrot and a stick for those merchants as well. Merchants who deploy point-of-sales systems that can accept EMV and NFC will receive a waiver from some of the burdensome compliance requirements for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). But if they don't there's a liability shift that will put them at fault for any certain fraudulent transactions.
Analysts say there are similarities and differences from the push a decade ago. "It's repeating what the card industry did 10-years-ago but bringing it to a whole new level," says Sirpa Nordlund, executive director at the Moby Forum.
The payment industry wanted to bring multi-application smart cards to consumers and retailers in 2001. The thought process is pretty much the same now but the form factor and computing power are different, Nordlund says. "People have the Internet in their pocket," she explains.
George Peabody, director of emerging technologies at the Mercator Advisory Group, says without additional security the business case for contact smart cards never existed. "There really wasn't a value proposition," he says. "They didn't speed up transactions and weren't accepted most places."
It's not going to be just payments that that drive NFC, Peabody says. "The ability to use it for marketing purposes is the kind of thing that gets a merchant's attention," he says. "We've had large merchants tell is they would kill to know who's coming into their store."
That may have been the same message a decade ago with contact smart cards but Peabody believes the difference is consumer usage. There was only a handful of banks issuing the cards and, outside of Target, very few retailers who could accept them. NFC is different because it uses the same contactless infrastructure that's already in place.
Peabody believes the new Visa rules requiring EMV and NFC enabled payment terminals will convince the majority of merchants to swap out devices in the next five years.
All that said the lack of enabled handsets is still holding back the widespread adoption of NFC. As of late 2011, the Samsung Nexus S was the only handset being used for payments in the U.S. Two Blackberry models have been equipped with NFC, but they have not been used in any payment programs. And the latest iPhone iteration is sans NFC.
This may change in 2012, says Peabody, citing that Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility is likely to bring more NFC handsets from the manufacturer.
It's going to come down to whether the mobile operators are willing to spend the money on NFC handsets, says John Devlin, group director at ABI Research. Until the business case is finalized on how the operators will make money it's difficult to say whether they'll invest the money.
To integrate NFC into a handset costs the manufacturer $6 to $8 depending on the implementation. Telco's are charging $20 extra for enabled handsets, Devlin says.
2011 has been a big year for NFC and 2012 looks to see more deployments with ISIS–the partnership between AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile and payment brands–rolling out pilots. It is also likely to bring additional handsets and consumer availability as well.
George Peabody, director of emerging technologies at the Mercator Advisory Group, says that much of the discussion around NFC focuses on payments but there is so much more it can do.
NFC 1.0 is what's being discussed now and it is all about payments, Peabody says. But when NFC was first envisioned the idea of a powerful Internet connection and cloud computing on mobile devices didn't exist.
Part of NFC 2.0 is using a device as a smart card reader, Peabody explains. Merchants could use these devices for payment acceptance, and individuals could use them to access secure Web sites.
The approach can also be used for federal government PIV applications such as logical access to a communications network. In health care, the same approach can provide strong authentication for access into medical records.
NFC 3.0 could extend the technologies role to the cloud, says Peabody. Together the two technologies could create a security-as-a-service capability with applicability for payments and other transactions. This technology could enable new payment options for retailers and consumers. "A retailer could, for example, accept an Amazon payment at the point of sale. The consumer would be saying, effectively, to use the payment credential I store with Amazon," Peabody says.
Example of quick add-on to card program
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville launched a pilot bike sharing system where users swipe their university ID card to check out and return bikes around campus.
The pilot system includes two bike-sharing stations, each with ten bikes–seven electric bicycles and three standard bicycles.
Often this type of system would have real time, or at least regularly updated, communication with the campus card system. But the UT project simply uses the student ID number off the mag-stripe and checks it against a database stored locally at the sharing station, says Christopher Cherry, assistant professor at the university.
“If they’re on the list, presto, the system gets them a bike. If not, it doesn’t. It was a really easy solution and didn’t require getting into the campus card system,” Cherry explains. “We could have used a credit card number just as easily as an identifier, but then we would be storing information that required more security … no thanks.”
But security could still be an issue with this type of solution. Storing card numbers locally on a device could leave the data vulnerable. There’s also the revocation issue, making sure that someone who no longer participates in the program cannot still access the system.
Campus card providers are able to integrate bike share programs into campus systems.
At Washington State University in Pullman the school’s CBORD system was integrated with the BIXI bike sharing system. When a student swipes the card at the BIXI station, the interface validates the patron data from the card’s magnetic stripe against the data in the CS Gold system. This ensures that the user is an enrolled student or current WSU employee before releasing a bike.
Duke University, Durham N.C., also has a bike share system that utilizes the Blackboard Transact system to track usage. Bikes are registered into the Blackboard Transact system as products and assigned point values. Using Blackboard’s credit and debit functionality, students can use their DukeCard account to borrow bikes for the day. At the Duke Bikes Web site, they can go also online to check the inventory of bikes available, reserve a bike or renew their rental.
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s program is unique in that it offers electric bikes. Each electric bicycle has an attached motor which activates when pedaling becomes too difficult for the rider. The sharing stations also have an integrated bike rack, with a battery-charging kiosk, which distributes batteries to those who check out the e-bikes. Students can simply swipe their campus ID to check out bikes, and return them to the station when finished.
CycleUshare developed the two automated bike stations, which consist of an automated kiosk for check-in and check-out, as well as an integrated battery vending system whereby a user places an existing used battery for recharging and obtains a charged battery.
If successful the system may be adopted into a full-scale program by the university. Perhaps then the project will pursue a more integrated tie-in with the campus card system to take advantage of additional benefits such as revocation and enrollment status.
When small Mercyhurst College, a 4,000 student institution Erie, Penn., decided to revamp its print and copy management system, the school had no idea about the cost savings it would unleash. By the second year of operation the school was experiencing an 80% savings compared to years prior to the deployment.
“We didn’t expect to have cost savings of that amount,” admits John Patterson, Mercyhurst’s OneCard director. “We knew our (print) costs were out of control,” he says. “It was not unusual to have inkjets sitting on everyone’s desk.”
The cost of paper, print cartridges and toner were eating up the school’s print budget. Installing a new system meant the school had a chance to cut those costs.
Mercyhurst made the decision to implement a campus-wide print management system because of the cost it incurred with its old system. The school already had Pharos’ print management software on campus in the library and other public areas, and after a bidding process awarded a campus-wide print, fax and copy system to the company, Patterson says. Originally there were 285 inkjets, 62 laser jets and 137 all-in-one devices totaling 565 printers. The new system streamlined this to just 80 printers. This includes some departments with very specific needs and devices, says Patterson.
IKON Office Solutions, a Ricoh company, provided the wireless printing system, says Patterson. The multi-function printers interfaced with the campus card system from CBORD and the school’s key IT systems. They selected a Canon multi-function printer with Pharos’ Uniprint print management software embedded.
Mercyhurst uses Uniprint and its sister software Off-The-Glass, to track copies, says Ron Carson, account manager at Pharos. The copying tracking product was installed on more than 70 Canon integrated multi-function printers.
The Pharos solution is server-based, Carson explains. A user can hit the print button from an application on a network-connected computer or device and the job will be held in a printer queue. The student can then retrieve the job from a multi-function printer by swiping their ID or entering their login. They can also check their account balance at the printers.
“We have cash-to-card devices that allow students to put money onto their card. There’s one in the bookstore and one in the library,” says Patterson.
The ability to review the list of jobs before printing and thus being able to delete jobs that are obsolete contribute to cost savings of 30%, adds Carson.
There are a couple of different ways a school can deploy Pharos. The system is capable of being integrated into existing campus card systems but it can also be used as a standalone system, Carson says. “We get lots of cooperation from campus card providers,” he adds. “Blackboard is an authorized reseller of our solution and CBORD is one of our technology partners.”
At Mercyhurst all the processing happens in the CBORD system, there is no value on the card. Within the CBORD system there are different purses, one for meals, another for printing, and so forth, says Carson. The purses are separated so a student can’t use his meal plan funds or printing.
Print management systems save money for the institution in consumables but they can also save money for the student, says Carson. Because students have that extra chance to review a list of the jobs and cancel what they don’t need they don’t spend money on unnecessary prints. The print jobs also cost less, students pay a nickel for a regular copy, a far cry from the 15 cents they used to pay, and 34 cents for color versus 39 cents before.
The school had charged faculty 15 cents a page for a black and white copies and prints, says Patterson. Now, faculty and staff pay one cent for black and white copies or print jobs.
In addition to the cost savings, the system also helps Mercyhurt be more environmentally conscious. “A managed print and copy program actively promotes environmental sustainability,” Carson explains.
For students, the system offers convenience, security and cost effectiveness. “They can work on network-connected workstations or wireless laptops with the knowledge they can release their print jobs at any Pharos connected machine on campus. The system requires they authenticate at the device so there is no chance someone else will see or obtain their work,” says Carson.
For the future, Patterson hopes to migrate the print management system’s card authorization to the contactless technology on the campus ID. Today Mercyhurst uses contactless for dorm access and mag-stripe for the other functions. One day Patterson would like to have everything on the contactless portion of the card. It would be, he says, a simple matter to change out the USB readers on the printers for an iCLASS USB interface reader, he adds.
In the meantime, he’ll have to be satisfied with saving the college a bucket load of cash via an integrated print management solution.
A relative newcomer to the campus print management game is taking a different approach than previous providers. WEPA–Wireless Everywhere, Print Anywhere–lets campuses outsource their printing functions easing costs and workload.
Employing cloud computing and Software as a Service concepts, WEPA can help eliminate an institution’s dependence on equipment purchases or leases, hardware and software licenses and maintenance and server integration fees.
Using the system, students upload documents for printing from any Internet computer or device and then print them at kiosks.
They send print jobs to the cloud from a network computer, wireless laptop or device, says Frank Griffith, CEO at the company. At kiosks placed around the campus, they securely retrieve their jobs and print where and when it is convenient.
When not in use for printing, the kiosks double as a campus communications tool–displaying announcements, emergency notifications and ads. Students can access an RSS feed to update them of different activities on campus. Targeted advertisements from local or national merchants can create new revenue for the campus.
WEPA supports multiple platforms including Windows, Mac, Linux and UNIX, and offers students the option to print their documents in black and white or color, as well as double-sided prints.
According to the company, more than 30 campuses will implement the system this fall and 70 are expected for spring 2012 implementations. Among the fall implementers is the University of West Florida. The Pensacola, Fla.-based institution is working with Heartland Campus Solutions to install kiosks at the UWF Student Center, libraries, computer labs, residence halls and classrooms.
The University of British Columbia has begun the transition to a contactless smart card to access every building and lab on campus.
The iClass UBC card contains an embedded chip which is used to securely open doors when tapped against hotspots located at the building and lab entrances. The card on the hotspot will communicate with campus system software, pull up the students and staff individual profile, and allow them access to the building if they’re authorized to do so.
“Some of our staff only work Monday to Friday and have access from 7am to 5pm on those days. And students will run into the same issues they face today: locked doors,” said Debbie Harvie, managing director of University Community Services. “We can turn that access on and off and change it automatically.”
UBC has already deployed the keyless system at 20 university buildings and labs. And by the end of the fiscal year, the UBC Okanagan campus hopes to be a 100% keyless.
Read the full story here.
The new QCard system at Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University isn’t exactly receiving the warm student welcome that administrators had hoped for, according to a university student newspaper.
Students can now “tap” their QCard to access to certain campus buildings, in addition to purchasing meals in the school’s cafeteria. But students are discontent with the fact that only half of the cafeteria lines support the new feature, this and that they are still required to manually swipe their QCard for getting into their individual dorm room.
“They’re good and useful in that they’re easy to access your building,” said sophomore student, Anmol Mehta. “But then I have to slide it in to get in my room. They might as well make it so that it’s all tap and not go back.”
Adding salt to the wound, the new QCard system also carries a new replacement price. Instead of the $20 from the old system it now costs students $30 to replace their QCard in the event it becomes lost or stolen.
Read the full story here.
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and Green Bay Metro recently signed a revised busing agreement that will permit unlimited bus rides for students, faculty and staff.
The new “U-Pass” contract does away with the former agreement, under which a $35,000 annual lump-sum payment was paid to Metro in exchange for unlimited bus rides for students, faculty and staff.
Under the new arrangement, the charge back becomes 25 cents per ride, billed quarterly, which still will allow University ID-holders to ride at no additional charge. The bus system charges based on actual ridership, tracked through scanned student IDs, and is underwritten by student fees and a portion of University parking fees.
U-Pass was originally designed in 2008 as part of an effort to encourage bus ridership among students, faculty and staff, emphasizing the convenience and cost and environmental benefits of taking the bus.
