Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Another university will begin offering a car-sharing program, this one from rental car giant Hertz. The University of Arizona, Tucson, will have 10 cars parked mostly near the school’s dorms available for short-term rentals beginning about the middle of August.
As with most car-sharing programs, students, faculty and staff need to register for the program and receive a contactless membership card that can be used to unlock the cars. The rental cost is $8 to $10 an hour. University officials think it will cut down on traffic congestion on the campus plus it will save students or faculty the cost of a parking permit, which runs $353 to $568 a year.
U.S. Bank is the first card issuer in the U.S. to add Visa payWave technology to an unembossed debit card that is issued instantly to an account holder upon opening an account. The instant-issue Visa payWave pilot is being tested at select U.S. Bank branches in Denver and Salt Lake City.
The pilot enables U.S. Bank and its customers to combine three new technologies into one card - instant issuance, unembossed personalization and contactless payment. The instant issue debit card provides several benefits to the customer because the permanent debit card can be issued in the branch at the time the customer opens a checking account, rather than that same customer getting an initial temporary card, then waiting for the permanent one to arrive days later in the mail.
U.S. Bank chose the metropolitan areas of Denver and Salt Lake City due to its strong presence in both cities and because customers there are familiar with contactless payment. Many merchants currently offer Visa payWave readers as a payment option.
Visa provides the Visa payWave feature in this program, while Dynamic Card Solutions is supplying the software and hardware necessary to personalize and issue the debit cards instantly at the branches.
The University of South Carolina in Columbia is joining the wireless revolution, Within a year, students will have broadband wireless access regardless of where they are on campus. But this increased connectivity doesn’t come cheap. The university will pay AT&T, the wireless provider, between $60,000 and $70,000 a month once installation is completed.
Wi-Fi access will be free for students, faculty and staff who will be able to log in using their university ID numbers. The university and AT&T also plan to make the wireless service available to campus guests, who would pay a fee on a credit card for temporary access.
At least 37 Fayetteville, Ark. School District teachers are ID theft victims as someone used their Social Security numbers to establish cell phone accounts in their names, then made thousands of dollars worth of international calls. The largest bill was 43 pages long and totaled $4,215. All accounts were with Sprint, which isn’t holding the teachers accountable.
“Of course, we are not going to hold any of these people responsible,” a Sprint spokesperson said. “Sprint is a victim, too. We’re going to be out tens of thousands of dollars in these charges.”
The scary part? Authorities haven’t yet figured how the thieves obtained the information necessary to set up the fraudulent accounts. So far, only certified employees with teaching certificates have been affected. There are no reports of support staff being victims.
Read more here.
The University of South Florida in Tampa is joining the car-sharing craze. Called WeCar from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, students, faculty or staff who buy a $20 membership will be able to rent for an hour, a day, or even over night one of four gas-electric hybrids placed about campus at rates ranging from $10 to $12 a hour.
Once they join, they receive a card that provides access to the vehicles. They then make an online reservation, go to the car parked at a designated spot, hold the card above a sensor on the windshield to unlock the vehicle, then drive away using the key inside. The WeCar program is part of the school’s effort to reduce the number of cars on campus, said a university spokesperson.
An Alabama high school this fall will start requiring its 1,400 students to wear a picture ID, the school’s new principal has announced. “The ID’s are for administrators, for teachers, for students. The safety issue is that we’ve had some issues previously with kids being on campus that didn’t actually attend Blount High School,” Jerome Woods, principal at the Prichard, Ala. school said.
The IDs will also include bar codes containing the students’ information. They’ll need the cards to get on the bus, in the classroom and even the cafeteria.
Financial markets magazine Euromoney has named U.S. Bancorp as the “Best Bank in the U.S.” as part of the publication’s 2009 Awards for Excellence. The honor was presented the Minneapolis, Minn.-based bank in London last week.
The publication cited U.S. Bancorp’s performance during the roller coaster economy and noted that the bank “has been seen as a safe pair of hands with a balance sheet to use, and companies have needed banks over turbulent times that can lend when loans are due for renewal.”
“Investors in U.S. Bancorp have shown their positive view by buying up a stock offering, and the company passed the stress tests where others failed,” said Helen Avery, Euromoney’s U.S. editor.
Euromoney has selected the outstanding institutions in finance with its annual Awards for Excellence since 1992. The awards include global recognition for organizations within banking and capital markets, and they give recognition to the best banks and security houses in almost 100 countries.
U.S. Bancorp is the parent company of U.S. Bank, the sixth largest commercial bank in the United States.
Starting Aug. 3, all returning Milwaukee Area Technical College students will need to get new student ID cards because the school has brought in a new banking partner, U.S. Bank. The new cards will also be used to pay for parking at the Downtown Milwaukee Campus.
There will be no additional cost to students for the new cards, but the school is requesting the return of all current IDs.
Connecticut has joined several other states that are seeking to restrict or forbid credit card marketing activities on campus. Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed legislation that sets strict parameters for credit card companies as to when, where and how they can market to students.
The law also orders the Board of Governors of Higher Education to create a new policy by Jan. 1, 2010, to force credit companies to register with state colleges and universities.
It prevents companies from signing up students for credit cards during orientation and class registration and forces companies to give educational materials on how to retain good credit ratings. The law also bans companies from giveaways at sports events and prevents educational institutions from giving the names and addresses of students to credit card companies.
Read more here.
Stolen laptops or hacked student databases are one thing, but lost student loan promissory notes? That’s what Florida’s Department of Education is telling 475 student-loan borrowers. According to the Office of Financial Student Assistance, the students’ financial records may have been exposed to identity theft due to the lost notes that students signed when they were going to school, and have now fallen behind on.
“While your file was being processed for reassignment during the week of May 25, 2009, your promissory note(s) was lost,” read the memo from the financial assistance office that went to the borrowers. The office “cannot verify if the record of your promissory note(s) has been tampered with or if the confidentiality of your promissory note(s) was compromised,” the letter added. It urged borrowers to place a fraud alert on their credit files.
