EduCard LLC, a division of software developer Evisions, Irvine, Calif., has tapped Metavante Corp. to provide its prepaid card processing services, allowing universities using the program to disburse money to students via EduCard’s preloaded Intellecard Visa-branded debit cards, thus giving students instant access to their funds.

Metavante Corporation announced it is providing prepaid debit card processing and related services to EduCard LLC to help colleges convert check-based student accounts payable transactions into electronic funds transfers loaded directly onto prepaid debit cards.

EduCard is a division of Evisions, Inc. Metavante Corporation is the financial technology subsidiary of Marshall & Ilsley Corporation.

In addition to prepaid card account processing, Metavante provides card personalization and fulfillment, 24/7 cardholder phone support and Internet account access. Intellecard, EduCard’s proprietary prepaid debit card solution, works exclusively with Intellecheck, Evisions’ proprietary accounts payable software application currently used at the bursar’s office at more than 800 institutions of higher education across the United States. While colleges can employ these re-loadable prepaid student debit cards to disperse financial aid, student payroll, tuition reimbursements, and for many other accounts payable functions, Intellecard functionality also enables the student, their parents, or even an off-campus employer to load funds onto the card. The Visa-branded prepaid debit card can be used at over 30 million merchants and more than 1 million ATM locations.

“Previously, universities had to choose between direct deposit and checks when disbursing payments of any kind to students. With many students away from their financial institution or un-banked altogether, a financial aid payout by check, for example, does them little good when they need to buy books,” said Michael L. Mattos, president and chief executive officer of EduCard. “Backed by Metavante’s ability to make this payments program a success, Intellecard makes funds immediately available to students. Equally important, Metavante has the payments processing scalability needed to handle the sizeable prospective client base already using the underlying Intellecheck software, should they decide to offer prepaid cards as another payment option.”

A Utah-based university, which began issuing the cards in Dec. 2005, has distributed 350 cards with a total value of $400,000. In addition, 10 more universities, representing 148,000 students and average payment amounts of $4,000, will soon begin issuing Visa-branded prepaid debit cards via the Intellecard process.

“Metavante Payment Solutions is built on providing a complete suite of card options that enables the growth of electronic transactions by consumers and supports any type of prepaid debit program,” said Frank D’Angelo, president and chief operating officer, Metavante Payment Solutions. “Helping make Intellecard an innovative payments option on college campuses not only reinforces Metavante as a leader in the prepaid debit industry, but provides more convenience for students and drives efficiencies and cost savings for colleges by reducing the amount of paper-based payments.”

Metavante Payment Solutions delivers electronic money movement through an integrated payments network, including an ATM/PIN-debit network in NYCE, online bill pay, a complete suite of payment cards and automated clearing house (ACH) processing. Metavante helps clients grow revenue by capitalizing on the expanding electronic payments markets including financial, healthcare and government payments. Metavante offers clients the efficient, comprehensive and integrated resources necessary to offer their customers the broadest range of payment options and touch points.