Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Accidents happen, it's a fact of life. On campus, one of the most common accidents, however inexplicable, is the misplacement of the campus card. It's the prime reason that campuses charge a fee for card replacement.
In a report from The Post Athens, Ohio University raked in a reported $55,000 in card replacement fees during the fiscal year 2015 -- a figure that is up from $54,000 the year prior. This figure may or may not be significant in the grand scheme of card replacement fees, and it may be worth noting that at the time of these fiscal reports OU boasted a total enrollment of just more than 29,000 students. But nevertheless, this does reiterate the fact that students still, and will continue to, misplace their IDs.
The Post Athens report highlights one case in particular to drive the point home. One sophomore at the university has spent an estimated $150 on what she believes to be some 15 misplaced OU student IDs -- all in just two years. Whether lost in a dorm room, dropped somewhere on campus and not picked up, left on a dining hall tray, or simply lost along with the wallet it's kept in, the fate of the campus card lies with the student it's issued to.
As for the replacement fee, the student goes on to explain that the effort to search for a misplaced ID no longer represents time well spent because she feels the process to get a new campus card is quicker and more convenient.
Lost, stolen or damaged OU student IDs must be replaced at a cost of $10 -- a relatively reasonable fee given the fact that some campuses with technology cards charge upwards of $25 for a new ID. In an email to The Post Athens, OU's director of access, transaction and video services explains that fees collected for card replacement go toward supply costs for cardstock, labor and staffing costs for the Bobcat Depot -- which plays home to OU's campus card office -- as well as general equipment costs.
For students, the incentive to take care of their campus card may be monetary. Another student at OU reported that the Bobcat Cash on her lost ID had been used by other people on more than one occasion. Once to the tune of $40 and about $30 a second time on another lost card.
At OU, per the card office's policies, Bobcat Cash can only be refunded if lost or stolen card are reported to the university within two business days, at which point the cardholder would be responsible for no more than $100 in fraudulent charges. Failure to notify the card office within two days, however, could result in a maximum liability of $500, provided the university can prove it could have prevented the illegal use of the card.
The lesson? One way or another campus card replacement adds up.
Debit and credit cards, as well their mobile equivalents, are giving campus cards a run for their money at vending machines on many campuses across the country.
Although providers of traditional closed-loop campus ID card systems may be losing their once exclusive grip on cashless vending sales, most say the migration to open-loop payments is contributing to a rising tide in unattended sales. A generation of students weaned on plastic has easier access to beverage and snack machines, and campus visitors can tap or swipe their credit and debit cards rather than seek out cash or potentially forego the purchase altogether.
But the closed-loop, declining balance account remains viable and is still the method of choice in dining halls, laundries, copying and printing environments.
“Vending is continuing to grow on campus,” says Dan Gretz, senior director for market development at Blackboard Transact. “The vending providers like Canteen and Coca-Cola are regularly deploying card readers that take both the campus card and the credit and debit cards on all the vending machines on campus, not just those in the high-traffic areas.”
[pullquote]Vending providers like Canteen and Coca-Cola regularly deploy readers that accept both campus cards and credit and debit on all campus vending machines, not just those in the high-traffic areas.[/pullquote]
Today, it seems almost essential to consider open-loop payment. According to research from the Student Monitor, 52% of students name debit and credit cards as their preferred payment method.
Until recently, credit cards for vending weren’t even in scope. Traditionally, schools would put dedicated readers from their campus card vendor on vending machines to accept the campus card. But with rising student use of credit and debit cards, vending providers saw the opportunity to expand sales and began adding a separate, open-loop card reader to machines on campus.
Deploying two card readers on a single vending machine was not the most elegant solution and certainly not the best option from a user’s perspective. “It wasn’t clear to users which reader they should swipe or tap their card to complete the transaction,” explains Gretz.
Today, vending readers are available that accept both the campus card and branded credit and debit cards.
Blackboard has adopted the more agnostic approach to payments by allowing campuses to grow their base of revenue-producing vending machines, while the open-payments system is more accommodating to students and campus visitors accustomed to using plastic, says Gretz. Still, he stresses that Blackboard’s core solution remains closed-loop, declining balance accounts.
James Lawrence, vice president of vending and campus markets for wireless payments processor Apriva, says the company entered vending in the higher education space three years ago offering an integrated card reader that could process payments from both campus cards and credit/debit cards.
“Years ago, it was strictly cash and coins at campus vending machines,” says Lawrence. “Then the campus card companies began the cashless trend by offering their own proprietary reader that would accept campus cards only. They would sell them to the vending machine providers for $1,100 to $1,200 a piece. That was acceptable because the readers created significant value for the campuses and the vending contractors.”
Today a single reader can accept campus cards, credit cards, debit cards, gift cards as well as contactless options such as Apple Pay or Samsung Pay all on one device. “All at about half the cost of the proprietary readers, that’s a game changer because you now have the added value of all payment types at a substantially lower cost to the campus,” says Lawrence.
Because Apriva enjoys an economy of scale, it can offer its all-in-one payment device for less than the proprietary readers designed for campus cards, he explains. In other words, they sell readers to many markets and are not confined to a set client base like campus card providers. Thus they can produce higher volumes of readers while reducing production costs.
Lawrence says that the reduced unit costs enables campuses to equip twice as many machines and increase revenues from vending commissions. Apriva, however, does not consider itself a competitor to the campus card companies because it has partnered with most of them to provide gateway services via its card reader. Readers recognize if a transaction should be routed to a campus card server or to MasterCard and Visa.
Recarding a campus is never a small task. It’s a process that takes time, demands the attention of multiple campus stakeholders, and requires careful planning to ensure that the change of credential goes smoothly for both students and the institution.
Thankfully, institutions don’t have to go it alone. That’s the major takeaway for the University of Cincinnati, who recently updated its campus credential with the help of ColorID.
The campus wanted to move from a mag stripe only credential to a card with both mag stripe and a contactless chip. “The primary reasons for issuing new IDs is to provide increased security and improved functionality,” explains Diane Brueggemann, technical services manager at the University of Cincinnati.
For Cincinnati, a university with a large population, challenges included logistics and staffing for mass card distribution events. “We were able to overcome these challenges because we included all major stakeholders – including student government representatives – on the recarding committee,” says Brueggemann.
The university wanted a more secure contactless technology card to upgrade physical access readers and integrate with the local Cincinnati METRO system, says Tim Nyblom, director of the education group at ColorID. “Their overarching goal was to find a single card that could accomplish all of this.”
[pullquote]They wanted contactless tech to better secure physical access and integrate with the local Cincinnati METRO system. The overarching goal was to find a single card that could accomplish all of this[/pullquote]
The new cards include DESFire EV1 contactless chips that facilitate access throughout the campus’ network of HID readers and Blackboard access control and point-of-sale readers, says Nyblom.
Cincinnati enlisted the help of ColorID to provide cardstock and assist in the issuance process for the university’s 45,000 active cardholders.
ColorID worked with HID Global to provide pre-printed contactless cards that were pre-encoded with custom transit credentials to meet the SPX Genfare specifications for the SORTA system, explains Todd Brooks, director of product management at ColorID.
The ColorID service bureau personalized the initial 45,000 cards adding cardholder photos and personal information. Before shipping to campus, the mag stripes were encoded and two applications were programmed into the DESFire EV1 Chip. Cards were sorted and then shipped per preset preferences established to ease onsite distribution.
The full recarding process took about three and a half months and concluded in the fall of 2015, explains Nyblom. “There were many months of additional planning, testing and creating samples that took place well before the recarding project could begin,” he explains.
“The 45,000 cards preprinted by ColorID consisted of registered students, active faculty, staff and affiliates,” says Brueggemann. To ease the distribution burden, the university held two separate distribution events – one for faculty and staff credentials and a second for students.
In total, the university ordered 65,000 cards from ColorID, with 45,000 being used for the initial recarding project. “The remaining 20,000 cards are Cincy’s base, pre-printed cardstock that will be kept on campus for normal card office distribution,” explains Nyblom.
Following the initial distribution event, all cards are now produced on demand in the card office. For these cards, only the back portion is pre-printed while the front is personalized at the point of issuance. “Cincy chose a reverse-transfer printer, which allows them to print a very high quality card, similar to how a pre-printed card may look,” explains Brooks.
Projects the size of Cincinnati’s are rarely without their challenges, but with a comprehensive plan and the support of an experienced vendor, the challenges can be managed.
“The biggest challenge was correctly encoding the transit portion of the cards,” says Brooks. “We spent several months working with all parties involved – including the university, the card manufacturer, the transit equipment manufacturer and the transit authority – to make sure the encoding was done correctly.”
The new Bearcat Card.
Another challenge was getting all of the credentials on to the card. “Applications have specific methods for encoding credentials on a chip and they may not coincide. You have to determine which applications can be pre-encoded versus encoded in the printer or at the desktop,” explains Brooks. “Since Cincy is issuing randomized ISO numbers, pre-encoding was not a viable option. We pre-encoded the transit portion and then added the access control and the Blackboard application data at the desktop.”
The final hurdle came in the form of working with older systems and processes. Cincinnati had multiple legacy access control systems so an individual’s images, biometric templates and ID numbers from the previous cards were held as records in different systems, explains Brooks. This created the need to encode the legacy access application using a desktop encoder.
“From a secure suite at our headquarters in North Carolina, our service bureau is equipped to personalize ID cards for projects large and small,” explains Brooks. “We are experienced with a wide range of card technologies, back end systems, hardware and software.”
At Cincinnati, the company facilitated and managed a great deal of the recarding project. “Their expertise and experience was essential to making this project a success,” says Brueggemann.
Tapingo, mobile commerce application for college dining, has announced that in the first three months of 2016, 28 higher education institutions have joined the Tapingo network.
Using Tapingo, students, faculty and staff can browse menus, customize orders, pay, then pick up their food without waiting in lines -- or have their order delivered directly to them. Tapingo works closely with a broad range of campuses, as well as food service industry leaders, and national and regional brands to form the Tapingo Partner Ecosystem, which has grown to include companies such as Chipotle Mexican Grill, 7-Eleven and Aramark. In addition to its mobile commerce solution, Tapingo also provides comprehensive support for operations, marketing and support efforts.
“It’s clear that the market has seen the value of our robust solution, and we’re proud to welcome these 28 schools to the Tapingo family,” says Jeff Hardy, chief business officer at Tapingo. “By forging relationships with innovative, forward-looking campuses and food service providers, such as Aramark, we’ve successfully reached and engaged students across the country.”
For the University of North Carolina Wilmington, one of the newly added campuses, the implementation of mobile ordering has been a long time coming.
“Mobile ordering has been on our list of technologies to get on campus for quite some time,” says Matt Rogers, Campus Dining Resident District Manager at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. “Tapingo was the only company we found that provided a sleek, attractive and functional system to meet this need.”
Since implementing Tapingo at UNCW, Rogers notes a noticeable change in food service on campus citing specifically the app’s ease of use and the elimination of queues at dining locations. “We have seen both an increased throughput and a shortening of lines as customers are able to order their food more ‘real time on their time’ allowing for better traffic flow of transactions,” he adds.
Tapingo expects to build on its strong first quarter growth by partnering with even higher numbers of campuses throughout the rest of the year.
Campuses that joined Tapingo in Q1 2016:
Blackboard has announced a partnership with Uber Technologies that will create a convenient travel alternative for students at hundreds of colleges and universities nationwide.
The partnership will be spearheaded by Blackboard Transact, the company's payment and security solutions branch, and will enable students to arrange for their Uber car rides using a campus payment option enabled by Blackboard Transact. The solution will include an account dedicated exclusively to the ride service, and will be accessible directly from the Uber app.
Students can request the Uber cars and seamlessly pay for the rides using the campus card account as tender. Under the program, a dedicated "specific use" purse can be established in the institution's Blackboard Transact campus card system, enabling deposits and payments by the institution, parents or the student.
"For decades, Blackboard Transact has been committed to delivering innovative payment and security solutions in the interest of serving students and the institutions they attend," says David Marr, SVP at Blackboard Transact. "This exciting new partnership with Uber, an industry leader in its own right, demonstrates our commitment to improving the overall student experience."
"We believe this program provides students with reliable transportation options at any time -- particularly when it may be unsafe for that student to get behind the wheel," Marr adds. "We hope this innovative partnership will encourage responsible transportation decisions by ensuring availability of funds and ease of access."
The partnership with Uber marks the latest step taken by Blackboard to deliver the conveniences, preferences and technological capabilities that is now synonymous with college life. For Uber, whose technology has come to be ubiquitous around the world, the ability to quickly and conveniently get people to their preferred destination is one that can provide significant value on college campuses.
"We want to make sure that students on campuses across the country have a safe, convenient and affordable way to get around," says Amy Friedlander Hoffman, head of Business Development and Experiential Marketing for Uber. "We're looking forward to working with Blackboard to make it even easier to ride safely around campus -- something that is important to students, parents and universities."
Determining where discretionary funds can be used is a dilemma that's seemingly as old as meal plans themselves. The questions of whether these funds can be used beyond the confines of campus is often down to university dining officials, food service providers, or some combination of the two.
That's the case at Pennsylvania's Shippensburg University, where students are questioning why their flex dollar spending is restricted to only on-campus purchases. But there likely won't be a change to that formula for some time as the university is simply honoring its current food-service contract.
Per a report from The Slate, Shippensburg is currently in the third year of a seven-year contract with food-service vendor Chartwells. As laid out in university's food-service contract, every dining location on campus is legally owned by the contractor, including franchises like Starbucks. Breaking the contract with Chartwells would, among other things, likely make keeping the franchises in place challenging.
Shippensburg's vice president of student affairs told the Slate that part of the food-service contract is prohibiting flex dollars from being spent off campus -- and for good reason. Of the many factors considered in the matter, keeping discretionary funds, or flex dollars, on campus enables a university to better guarantee students won't use the money to purchase liability-laden items like cigarettes or alcohol.
Even if the university allowed local businesses to accept flex dollars, there remains the issue of local merchants accepting the funds. University officials warn that business owners might not be interested as it would require the purchase of expensive POS equipment.
In the Slate report, Shippensburg's vice president for student affairs, Roger Serr, also suggests that if flex dollars were to be allowed to leave campus, then the university may have to remove some on-campus assets.
“Really the question is, 'What do we have to cut?’” Serr says. "What retail organizations do we need to remove to offset the loss of revenue from flex spending?"
As with any food-service contract, there is an end date at which point Shippensburg could choose to undergo an RFP process if the campus is interested in seeking other vendor partners. For now, however, it remains business as usual.
It’s the end of an era at the National Association of Campus Card Users, as the association’s long standing Executive Director, Lowell Adkins, calls time on a successful career in the campus card industry.
He started in the campus card business in January of 1981 and never looked back. During that 35-year period, he touched every facet of the industry, spanning roles at the university, corporate and industry association levels.
Adkins recently spoke with CR80News about his experiences in the campus card industry, his time with NACCU and future plans away from the card business.
A graduate of Duke University with a Masters of Divinity, Adkins spent his early professional years as a pastor and a contract administrator for an architect before returning to his alma mater to take a position as a dining hall manager. Following a reorganization of Duke’s food services program in the early 1980s, Adkins assumed the role of assistant director of support services, marking his official introduction to the university’s card program.
In his time with Duke, Adkins played a pivotal role building the university’s card program to one of the most advanced in the country. The early years were pioneering, and the growth of the program at Duke was largely due to Adkins and the rest of the Duke staff demanding more from their card system.
Adkins is quick to credit the vision for that pioneering system to his mentor at Duke, Joe Pietrantoni, who in the mid 80’s envisioned a fully cashless, keyless card program. It was ambitious and forward thinking then, but even 30 years later the industry has yet to fully achieve this vision, he says.
“We started wherever Harco – Duke’s hardware supplier at the time – was willing to provide equipment,” says Adkins. “We knew we were on the cutting edge, and it was a delight to see Joe’s vision begin to unfold.”
Ambitious plans require a strong vendor-institution partnership and Duke found this with small solution vendor, Harco. After shopping the idea of a cashless, keyless campus to a vendor or two, others said “no way” but Harco jumped right on board, says Adkins.
Adkins remained at Duke, expanding the card program until 1997, when he joined the Phoenix-based AT&T CampusWide, which had recently acquired Harco.
Adkins developed an appreciation for the corporate side of the market where he learned to approach familiar campus card challenges from a different perspective. “We always asked ‘how can you make a system as user-friendly, efficient and affordable as you can, while continuing to extend functionality?’” says Adkins. “This was the focus at CampusWide and my focus during my years on the vendor side of the business.”
Blackboard would later acquire the CampusWide offering, and Adkins would manage that business line for the new entrant in the campus card space.
Following a successful four years from 1997 through 2001 with CampusWide/Blackboard, and a further couple of years as a consultant in the corporate realm, Adkins felt that a role nearer to universities was in order. In 2004, Adkins threw his name in the hat for the role of NACCU’s Executive Director, a position he officially assumed in March of that year.
At NACCU, he was determined to help the corporate and higher ed realms come together, no doubt a result of his experience on both sides of the market. “Corporate partners have a feel-good relationship about the association and I have worked very hard to foster that,” he says. “In the global scheme, this isn’t a big industry, but these vendors and corporations have devoted themselves to serving it.”
[pullquote]That’s the overwhelming culture of NACCU, a ‘we’re all in this together’ belief. It’s a culture I’ve worked very hard to foster.[/pullquote]
It's a culture that extends to the individuals working for corporate partners as well. “These are talented professionals with all kinds of opportunities, but they choose to stay and serve higher ed,” says Adkins. “Most stay because they really care about colleges and universities.”
During his career, the campus card industry has grown past its early mom-and-pop days, but he sees people working internally to keep that spirit and culture of service alive. “Being successful in this market still requires a much warmer, familial approach.”
It’s a culture Adkins believes is unique to higher ed. “I have not experienced another organization where there is as much ‘let me help you’ as there is with this industry,” he says. “That’s the overwhelming culture of NACCU as an organization, a ‘we’re all in this together’ belief. It’s a culture that I’ve worked very hard to foster.”
Universities are often the perfect environments to test new methods for old processes. A perfect example of this is the campus mailroom where inefficiencies, outdated technology and spatial waste are proving to be more of a burden than a service.
Universities are exploring new ways to redefine the mailroom of old. Campus card providers offer automation services for package pickup, and technology companies like Ricoh and even Internet giants like Amazon are working to change the way campus mail is delivered.
A new entrant to the campus space, USZoom, is positioning its digital mailbox platform – which has been implemented at 120 locations across 42 states – specifically for the university space. Under a new moniker, iCollegeMail, the system provides campuses with a means to notify students when mail arrives and turns the concept of mail delivery into something of a concierge service.
USZoom initially developed the digital mailbox concept in 2007 for its shipping store that was serving international customers, says Barry Gesserman, chief marketing officer at USZoom. The company now serves 25,000 customers with digital mailbox solutions.
“We hear it all the time, whether it’s a dorm or a campus mail center, mail is delivered to boxes and it just sits there,” says Gesserman. “Even if they’re in close proximity, students aren’t thinking as much about mail, and it’s not a central part of their life.”
Since postal mail isn’t as much of a focus for students as it was years ago, universities need to rethink how they deal with letters and packages. The digital mailbox enables students to be notified – via smartphone app or email – when they receive a package or letter. Once notified, they can choose to visit their individual mailbox or report to the mailroom service window to receive their parcel.
Alternately, they can opt to immediately discard and recycle the mail, hold for pickup or forwarding to another address. It’s giving a measure of control to students as to how their mail is handled, while doing away with clunky mailboxes.
The mail center at East Tennessee State University is pioneering efforts to introduce new methods of mail delivery.
“East Tennessee State probably has the most innovative university post office in the country,” says Don McCarty, manager of Postal Services at the university. “We’ve been very progressive in launching new ideas.”
Prior to joining East Tennessee State, McCarty spent 27 years in the Marine Corps working in postal service, and by the time he retired he had essentially assumed the role of postmaster for the Corps.
“After moving mail all over the world – which the Marines do better than anybody else – I decided to join ETSU,” McCarty says. “When I arrived, they were about 30 years behind what I was used to.”
[pullquote]Students can pick up mail 20 hours a day, 365 days per year. They can receive their letters and packages without coming to a window, without assistance and without staffing.[/pullquote]
ETSU previously had a system that required an employee to manually enter students’ box number and send out an email notification to the student, explains McCarty. “The notification was simple and basically told students that they had first class mail in their box. Students didn’t know what the mail was – letter or package – only that they had mail.”
McCarty initially contacted USZoom looking for a means to introduce additional automation. With iCollegeMail, ETSU can now give students choice. “They have the choice currently to treat it as waste mail, which is good because a lot of those letters would normally fill up the trashcans in my lobby,” he says. “Now we directly recycle behind the counter so mail isn’t exposed to just anyone walking by.”
Students at ETSU also have the option to have mail placed in the mailbox, forwarded to another address or held for future pickup during vacations or breaks.
“My students can pick up mail 20 hours a day, 365 days per year,” explains McCarty. “They can receive their letters, parcel mail, everything without coming to a window, without assistance and without staffing.”
