Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Universities across the country issue millions of pieces of plastic every year so that students can make purchases, access facilities and prove identity for applications both on and off campus.
The vast majority of cards issued in higher education are made exclusively from polyvinyl chloride – or PVC. This is the cheapest and most common card material available, and for applications where the use is short term and counterfeiting is of little concern, 100% PVC could be a fine choice.
But when a card needs greater lifespan and increased security, universities may want to consider composite cards made from advanced card materials. These materials can add durability to the card and make them more difficult to counterfeit. The trade off is an increased cost per card, but in virtually every other secure card market, issuers are finding the benefits exceed the added cost.
Many assume the standard CR80-sized plastic card is a single piece of plastic die cut from a large sheet, but the truth is a bit different, says Pierre Scaglia, global segment manager for Secure Credentials at PPG Industries.
A typical card issued by a campus card office includes multiple layers of white plastic made from PVC with a clear PVC layer on top. The clear layer contains the variable information, such as photo and demographic information, he explains. The card can also include an overlay or laminate layer with a security element such as a hologram that is added during the personalization process.
If the card includes electronics – such as a contactless chip and antenna array – those are sealed in a sheet of plastic and placed in between the PVC core layers, Scaglia explains.
“This basic PVC card offers fairly low levels of security,” he says, alluding to the fact that it can be easily and inexpensively counterfeited.
PVC cards are everywhere, likely due to their extremely low cost. They are personalized using readily available desktop printers, which are available online from countless resellers and auction sites along with the PVC cards and printer ribbons required to create extremely passable fakes.
In summary, 100% PVC cards are great for fast, convenient and low cost ID creation, but they are susceptible to fraud and rank low on the durability scale.
Instead of constructing cards only with layers of PVC, composite cards layer different materials to add advanced features and combat counterfeiters. Composites are the go to options in the high-security identity document market and are being used in driver licenses and national ID cards across the U.S. and around the globe.
It's a fairly common occurrence for a university's campus card to be adorned with student help lines and other valuable contact information. Less common, however, is for that information to be printed to a K-12 ID card.
But at California's Davis High School, a campus volunteer crisis counselor has ensured that all students will have the contacts for this necessary support. As reported by The Davis Enterprise, beginning in August the backs of all student Id cards will be printed with the contact information for the Crisis Text Line — a free, confidential, 24-hour support service that students can contact any time via text.
The text line operates much as a crisis or suicide hotline does, with trained crisis counselors responding to every text they receive with support, counseling, referrals and more. A parent in the Davis Joint Unified School District and a crisis counselor with the text line initially approached school administrators about having the Crisis Text Line added to school identification cards, and administrators didn't hesitate.
The inspiration for printing the information on ID cards at Davis came from a national conference for text line counselors where a school from neighboring Palo Alto had printed the text line information on its ID cards. Though it's also a practice that has been heavily employed at the higher education level, as well.
The nationwide Crisis Text Line represents a valuable resource for students, and since going live in August 2013, nearly 37 million messages have been exchanged between crisis counselors and individuals in need. Also being printed to the back of Davis ID cards is information about the STOPit App, which allows students to anonymously report concerns directly to school administrators.
Prior to the change, the backs of Davis High student ID cards only contained information related to lost or replacement cards and how to order copies of the photograph on the front. The previous layout did leave space available for the additional text and information, so no design elements had to be removed.
The University of Southern California, the University of North Carolina, and Ole Miss have all chosen Appetize's cloud-based enterprise point of sale (POS) platform, adding a few more campuses to the company's roster of higher education clients.
Appetize is a point of sale technology company serving the sports and entertainment, education and professional service verticals. The company's payment platform is designed primarily to manage and process customer transactions at scale. Appetize’s proprietary system also supports POS technology across handheld devices, kiosks, mobile and inventory systems.
This latest batch of universities sees Appetize's payment platform now deployed to over ten new campuses in 2017. The platform prides itself on marrying point of sale and mobile payments technology to provide a quicker, easier front end experience for students, and a robust back-end suite for reporting, inventory and timekeeping.
The platform promises high level payment security and encryption, while the company itself assembles and provides the necessary hardware -- kiosks, handheld ordering tablets, POS systems and other concessions technologies. Appetize also accepts on-campus currency -- whether via campus card, mobile or dining credit payment options -- to provide students with additional ease in cashless payments for academic and on-campus dining purchases.
“Our technology is transforming how campuses cater to their students in a cashless world of tech-based payments,” says Max Roper, Chief Executive Officer at Appetize. “Appetize’s unique ordering systems like kiosks and tablets make purchasing a more interactive experience for the student customer, and increases revenue for the campus-based businesses.”
Appetize’s platform can be tailored to each campus' specific needs, covering a wide range of purchases and transactions, as well as managing inventory, tracking stock and reordering supplies. The platform also boasts support for mobile ordering for pickup, delivery or at-the-table ordering.
A host of female students at China's Beijing Normal University are able to access their residence hall by simply showing their face. The university has deployed facial recognition access readers at the perimeter doors one of the university's residence halls.
As reported by The Washington Post, the university installed two facial recognition devices at the entrance way to the No. 13 female student dormitory. The student residents can either swipe their student ID card, manually key in their ID number, or say their name prior to activating the facial recognition scan. The reader's camera will then scan the resident's face and identify a match against database records.
According to local reports, only active residents of dorm are granted entry, with successful access accompanied with an audible “welcome home." Here's the process in action. Thanks in part to the 3D face model that is taken at the time of enrollment, the reader can reportedly still achieve a match even if the resident changes hair styles, wears makeup or gains weight.
There is a caveat to the biometric system, however, in the form of slow throughput and traffic jams at the door. Some residents have complained that after classes let out, or at other peak times, lines form to get in the dormitory since residents can only enter one face at a time.
Beijing Normal University is the first of the Beijing region universities to implement facial recognition for physical access, and some reports suggest the readers could be deployed at another nine undergraduate female dormitories on campus in the future.
After launching a new open campus dining plan, George Washington University is working out some of the kinks beginning with a $200 boost to the amount of money on-campus students can spend on food.
As reported by the GW Hatchet, the university will give all on-campus students an additional $200 in dining funds, which students use to pay for meals on their student IDs -- the GWorld card. The changes are set to take hold with the start of the next academic year, with additional plans to expand discounted meal options this summer.
The meal plan adjustments are partially the result of some students reporting that the semester allotments weren't providing enough funds to cover the high cost of eating at various campus locations. Beginning next fall, the dining fund breakdown will see freshmen allotted $4,100 in dining dollars, sophomores $2,700, juniors $2,200 and seniors $1,200.
Beginning last year officials implemented an “open” dining plan that enables students to spend the entirety of their meal money at vendors and grocery stores across campus. Rather than leveraging traditional meal swipe allotments that automatically spreads dining funds more evenly, the open plan requires students to budget their own dining dollars and habits across the semester much like they would a debit account. Additonal money can be added to the accounts via GET or at the GWorld card office should a student exhaust all dining funds.
In the past, freshmen students were required to spend $1,400 of their $2,300 yearly dining dollars at on-campus locations. Following the dining reshuffle, however, students can now spend their dining plan allotments at any retail dining location that accepts the GWorld card.
A spokesman for the university says that an influx of more retail dining near campus in recent years, and dining related renovations currently happening on campus, has led some student traffic away from the more traditional campus dining hall. Reports also suggest that pricing at the retail locations has been more expensive than at campus-run establishments, leading the university to create what are called "meal deals." The meal deals are discounted meal combinations and were launched this past fall in response to student concerns regarding the affordability of dining around campus.
The meal deals offer students three options to combine individual menu items and save money at 23 participating vendors. Among the deals are a $6 breakfast, $8 dollar lunch and $10 dinner. University officials plan to add new vendors to the meal deal program during the summer to help increase the number of participants. The deals are designed to provide affordable dining options and encourage students to eat at on-campus vendors.
According to the Hatchet report the retail dining locations haven't yet seen strong adoption of the meal deals, with many students instead paying the normal, non-discounted prices. Some vendors believe that students might simply be unaware that the discounts are an option.
Springtime typically marks a period of normal operation for campus card offices. But even though the workload this time of year is relatively straightforward compared to the hectic orientation periods, it’s never too early to start planning for that next, inevitable rush.
Properly planning your card consumable orders is key to being prepared for both the high-issuance periods and normal office operations.
“Planning your card order is vital to the success of a card office,” says Mark Degan, director of corporate marketing at ColorID. “If you aren’t in touch with your provider and know what the accurate and most up-to-date lead times are then you could run the risk of having no cards to issue.”
It goes without saying that a card office without cardstock is a terrible scenario. “It’d be like a gas station running out of gasoline or a grocery store running out of milk,” says Degan. It certainly would be a black eye for the card office if they couldn’t issue cards for a completely avoidable reason.
In order to avoid down time, a card office needs to first consider their operation and the types of consumables needed and then place that order.
“A very good rule of thumb is to look at the time of the year and plan accordingly,” explains Degan. “The summer months are by far the busiest season for orders with early fall and late spring being the elevated lead times.”
That said, the more a card office can think ahead the easier the order process will go. “The winter months are the best time to order,” Degan says. “Lead times also depend on what type of card a campus is issuing, the card technology, the type of customization the campus is having done, etc.”
Predictably, the fewer the components included in a card the quicker and more readily available the materials will be, and in turn, the quicker that cardstock can arrive to campus. “100% PVC pre-printed cardstock with black imprinting on the back and one HiCo, three-track mag stripe may have a lead time of just three weeks, for example,” Degan explains. “But if a campus adds a custom holographic overlay and embedded identification technologies or chips, it can increase the lead time to six weeks.”
Improper lead-time is by far the biggest pitfall that a card office faces when placing consumable orders.
“What many offices aren’t considering is how many other jobs are already in line ahead of them, how rare their card materials are, and whether those materials are already sitting on the inventory shelf or not,” Degan explains.
CBORD has partnered with parking access systems specialist, SKIDATA, to fold in parking capabilities to the card system vendor's interface. The integration of SKIDATA's system with CBORD has been in the works for some time, with the companies seeing the partnership as a natural fit for college campuses.
Linking campus card software with parking technology allows parking payments to be processed more quickly and efficiently via automatic deduction from a campus card's declining balance account. Moreover, the partnership will see an additional data-collection point on campus, providing student cardholders with an extra layer of both personal security and security for their vehicles while on campus.
“We are very happy about our partnership with SKIDATA,” says Sue Chaffee, Director of Product Management at CBORD. “The interface is a great addition to our collection of solutions providing convenient and comprehensive services on college campuses.”
The partnership is also expected to build on the comprehensive campus card solution suite that CBORD customers are already familiar with. “Integrating with CBORD technology allowed us to accommodate all campus card holders, including faculty and staff,” sqys James Kovacs, Director of Client Services at SKIDATA. "Providing easy access and payment options for student and staff card accounts, SKIDATA has eliminated the hassle of on-campus parking."
SKIDATA specializes in professional access and entry management solutions. The company's products and services are designed to enable fast and secure access for both people and vehicles at ski resorts, shopping centers, airports, municipalities, sports stadiums and arenas, amusement parks, and, now, colleges and universities.
The company's parking management solutions include barrier gates, parking columns, tickets, POS terminals and automated payment machines. Seamless and secure integration of third-party systems offers customers the opportunity for custom integration of ID cards, loyalty cards, parking guidance systems, single space systems, and more.
If you’ve been around campus card systems long enough, or been included in enough campus IT conversations, chances are you’ve heard the term “SaaS.” The shorter and sweeter way to say “Software as a Service,” the SaaS model is quickly becoming the go-to model for hosting software systems across virtually every industry vertical, higher education included.
The trend toward hosting campus card instances off premise and moving away from dedicated, on-campus servers has already reached a significant number of institutions, and it’s high time that we all become acquainted with what this means.
Let’s use CR80News as an example. A decade ago, the CR80News web server lived in our office in the coldest room we could manage – which in Florida can be a challenge even in the winter months. Then shared hosting became the norm. CR80News.com moved to the shared hosting model when we purchased a physical server that was housed in a regional data center – in our case, Atlanta – complete with a redundant facility somewhere in California. We operated the box in Atlanta in much the same way as the one that lived with us locally, with the only difference being geographic location. It would be akin to moving the box that holds your card system to an IT facility somewhere else on campus.
Five or six years ago, we moved from shared hosting to a SaaS model that has removed the need for a dedicated server altogether. Instead we now operate on shared servers around the globe. Depending on the individual viewers location, overall web traffic and various other factors, the web site might be served from one of a dozen or so locations.
Despite this sounding far out, we actually feel safer in this service model because fire, flood or robbery no longer pose a threat to our operation. All the while from a reader perspective you didn’t see any change in website experience, in the same way students would not be affected by the decision to host a card system in a different way.
From personal experience, CR80News was able to move away from a model that is already starting to seem archaic. In many industries including publishing, dedicated on-premise hosting is already a thing of the past. And if progress made by other verticals is any indicator, it’s less a question of if, but rather when the SaaS model will become the de-facto choice for campus card systems.
Now that you’ve got an idea of what moving to the SaaS model looks like in practice, it’s important to be acquainted with the basic terminology. For starters, “SaaS” isn’t a technology; it’s a business model. Under the SaaS umbrella, there two primary methods of deployments:
Multi-tenant
A truly multi-tenant solution is a hosted system where many tenants share the same database and related applications. The data related to numerous client instances of an application is stored in the same database. The database and application architecture uses logical separation that prevents clients from seeing or making changes to each other’s data.
Single-tenant
Single-tenant SaaS systems are typically virtualized systems where the provider can spin up a fresh instance of their application including a dedicated database for a client. It is provided as a service, but fails to obtain all of the economies of scale possible with multi-tenant.
Mobile food ordering has taken college campuses by storm in recent years, and at the forefront of the trend is mobile ordering app, Tapingo. And the company has perhaps seen no better adoption of its app than in the state of Virginia.
Since going live at Virginia's major state institutions, Tapingo has seen record-breaking launches on the campuses of the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, and Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg.
At Virginia Tech, Tapingo's impact has been dramatic. Within three weeks of the app's launch in March 2017, 6,000 students had registered with Tapingo, making over 5,000 orders on the platform -- an early adoption rate that's unmatched by other Tapingo campuses.
“Student response has been great," Andrew Watling, Project and Training Manager for dining services at Virginia Tech. "A mobile ordering option was something that students had been looking for, and we knew it would take off.” A key benefit being realized by VT students, Watling adds, is having easier access to local food options when they want them.
Joining Tapingo's roster of Virginia campuses is UVA, where the app launched this spring. Within 12 days of going live, more than 2,800 UVA students had downloaded and registered on the app. Aiding the overwhelming adoption is a large roster of local UVA locations at which students can place mobile orders.
“We’re excited to see Tapingo take off in these major Virginia schools,” says Michael Samuels, Tapingo’s Head of Growth. “Our launch strategy is designed to maximize usefulness from day one. We strive to ensure that every venue that is important to our students is available on Tapingo.”
While rapid initial adoption isn't a rare occurrence for campus deployments, Samuels admits that the early results at both Virginia campuses are highly promising. “We know that UVA and Virginia Tech students are tech-savvy, and we are very grateful that they’re finding Tapingo to be such a great fit for their lives right off the bat,” he says.
Tapingo enables students to, from their smartphones, order food from participating locations and then skip the queue by designating that order for either pickup or delivery. The app integrates with campus IT systems and makes virtually any tender available on the app, including meal plans, declining balance and flex dollars.
Since first launching at Santa Clara University in 2012, Tapingo has expanded its client base to almost 200 campuses across the United States and Canada. Moreover, the company reports that the average Tapingo user now conducts more than 100 transactions per year via the app. Tapingo also partners with major food-service provides like Aramark and Sodexo, as well as national restaurant brands.
California's Vista Unified School District has expanded the use of a biometrics system that sees students scan their fingerprints to purchase food at the cafeteria lunch line.
According to a report from The San Diego Union-Tribune, the biometrics program has reportedly led to expedited lines and introduced new layers of security for student accounts from theft or accidental misuse. Students are automatically enrolled in the fingerprint program unless parents request that they be excluded.
Despite the overwhelming proliferation of the technology across numerous verticals, notably on smartphones and tablets, there remain some critics of biometrics and fears of identify theft and privacy protection. As with any properly implemented biometric system, however, the solution at the Vista Unified School District does not store or share fingerprint images, and instead encrypts them in a way that they cannot be reverse engineered back to the student.
The system being deployed is Educational Biometric Technology's IDConnect solution. As with most systems, IDConnect scans fingerprints and applies a mathematical algorithm to generate a unique number for each student, and never stores images of the finger. When it comes time for lunch, students simply apply their finger to the scanner and a match is made to the student's lunch account.
The Vista district is no stranger to fingerprints in the lunch line, as the district first launched the program a year ago and has since installed fingerprint scanners at 19 campuses. This latest expansion will see the 20th of 22 schools in the district outfitted with the fingerprint system.
The use of fingerprint biometrics has alleviated problems with previously associated with the use of student ID cards and PIN numbers, allowing lunch lines to move more efficiently. PINs proved to be problematic, as students would routinely forget their PIN or share it others. Cards, too, were a problem as they were easily lost by the district's younger students.
Per the Union-Tribune report, the initial buy-in for the system was roughly $66,000, with maintenance carrying a $200 per building, per year cost. Overall the system has seen significant student adoption, with just four families across the entire district opting out of the program.
