Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Palm Beach State College’s campus card office has opted to forego mobile credentials and stick with their longtime magstripe cards. While the decision may seem unusual to some, Jessica Bender, the college’s auxiliary services manager, explains to CampusIDNews the rationale and the research that went into it.
With a student population of 40,000, the college would face significant costs in transitioning to mobile, including annual licensing fees of $2 to $5 per credential. This compares to a onetime cost of just 25 cents per magstripe card.
She emphasizes that as a commuter-based community college, students don’t use their ID cards daily.
I don't think our students suffer by us not going mobile. As a community college, I'm not sure that they even know about it.
Most ID usage is tied to periodic events such as printing, financial aid transactions at the bookstore, or accessing the wellness center. They don’t have door access or meal plans that typically justify mobile adoption.
The average student age is between 23 and 26, and most live in the surrounding community.
If the college expands door access requirements to all students, the cost-benefit equation could shift. Then, Bender says, they would be open to reconsidering the decision.
She stresses that implementing mobile credentials should not be driven by trends. Incorporate careful evaluation of infrastructure, budget models, and long-term costs – including lost revenue from card replacements.
To watch the full interview, click the image at the top of this page.
Transcript
Our college has decided right now not to go mobile. One of the reasons is we're a very large community college and our use case doesn't really lend itself to mobile.
We have about 40,000 students, and we're still using magstripe cards. The cost is 25 cents a card.
To move to the mobile is a huge cost. We're carding 40,000 students. You have $2 to $5 annual cost per mobile.
We're not doing door access. We're not doing meal plans. We're doing mostly just stored value. So, for now, the magstripe works for us. That's why we decided no mobile for now.
I don't think our students suffer by us not going mobile.
Being a community college, I'm not sure that our students even know about it.
I hear the story that mobile makes the student decide whether they go to college A or college B. It gets a little bit different in the community college market because students stay near home to go to college.
Our students are not 18 to 21-year-olds. They're 23 to 26-year-old average.
I don't think that our students are suffering because we haven't gone mobile.
As a community college, we are all commuters, meaning we don’t have the residence halls so students don't need their card every day.
You know, I hear universities say that's why they found mobile because students always have their phone.
At a community college, the things students need their card for like printing, so you're not doing that every day. Financial aid at the bookstore, that's a semester thing. They want to maybe go to wellness center, so they need their card for that.
But it's not like a residential campus where you constantly need to present the credential.
I think that you really have to look at your use case to see if that makes sense.
That's funny that you should bring up when we might consider mobile. I was just in a meeting last week and we're slowly moving towards door access for our academic buildings. I was told by our chief safety officer that her goal is to have everything locked down 24x7.
And what that would mean would be someone would have to have a credential to present to get into buildings.
Right now we are using a MIFARE card for certain staff to have a limited amount of door access. But if you turned around and told me that from now on, every student was going to need to get that MIFARE card, so now you're at that same kind of price point at $5.
If that's where we get to, then I would say at that point that would change the conversation. Because you can save some costs by eliminating printers, eliminating staff at the printing locations, and still, you're going to be spending $5 on a MIFARE card. So I could spend $2 to $5 on the licensing for the mobile.
I just think when making a decision about mobile, it's a case by case decision and every school is going to be different.
I think some schools went with it because it was the cool, shiny thing to do, but I think you have to think about it.
Coming to things like NACCU and reading up on the industry, can help you understand all the costs involved.
Yes, the shiny new thing, but what I didn't know until I talked to a school that went mobile is it's an ongoing annual cost.
You have to have the infrastructure and the budget model to support that, and then you lose some income.
You lose your replacement fees and things like that, so you really need to make an informed decision and get all the facts before you decide, well, I'm going to do the shiny thing by going mobile.
Genea is a cloud-based smart building security provider that recently entered the higher education market via a partnership with Transact+CBORD. CampusIDNews talked with the company’s President and CEO Michael Wong to learn about the company and its offerings.
Though new to this market, Genea has deep roots in corporate security with major customers such as Target Corporation. Target uses the Genea platform across 18 countries and 1500 locations.
According to Wong, when Transact+CBORD was seeking a replacement to its on-prem TS Access solution, they selected Genea as a best-in-class cloud solution.
Most enterprise software applications no longer sit on a server in the basement of the building. They've migrated to the cloud. We're that cloud solution, best-in-class.
The company’s first higher ed implementation is underway at Mercer University, a former TS Access client looking to transition to a modern platform.
Wong highlights Genea’s flexibility, integration capability with other providers, and commitment to open hardware standards. Using Mercury hardware instead of proprietary controllers gives customers the freedom to switch vendors if needed.
Built natively in the cloud, Genea stands out for its speed of innovation. In 2023, the company rolled out 55 major feature updates, compared to just one or two typical of on-prem systems. This agility allows Genea to respond quickly to customer feedback and deliver requested features in weeks rather than months.
To watch the full interview, click the image at the top of this page.
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, I'm Michael Wong, President and CEO of Genea. We are a cloud-based smart building security platform.
We are relatively new to the higher ed space, partially because of our partnership with Transact+CBORD, where they're starting to end the life of some of their security products. They did their research on all the different access control solutions in the marketplace, and they said ours is the best. So that's how we got introduced to this industry.
We're now working with some of the other providers as well to do integrations.
We do all Target security worldwide, so access control across 18 countries, 1,500 retail locations, all their corporate offices, data centers, distribution centers.
Right now we are doing our first implementation for Mercer University. So, I talked to Ken Boyer. Once we're fully implemented, he'll be able to tell you what the experience has been like.
In terms of other industries that we've worked with, Target Corporation is our largest customer. We do all Target security worldwide, so access control across 18 countries, 1,500 retail locations, all their corporate offices, data centers, distribution centers.
So we know we can handle higher ed and the scale and complexity that it requires, because we've done it for a Fortune 50 company.
You know, one of the things that's happening right now with the industry is, for example, Transact is end of life’ing their TS access solution, and so those customers need to find a different solution.
So once again, as Transact looked at not developing another solution internally and trying to bring that to the cloud, they picked us as a best-in-class solution.
So that's what brings us back to Mercer University. Mercer was a TS access client. They were looking at trying to figure out what was the next step. And so we're right now at the beginning of the implementation process for Mercer University, and it's going well.
A lot of the end users that I've been talking to at the conference are just trying to figure out what else is available.
With Mercury hardware, they have 23 software providers that could use that same controller. So, if you do nothing else besides make sure that you get onto a Mercury platform, you future proof your investments.
And so with most enterprise software applications, they no longer sit on the server in the computer in the basement of the building. They've migrated to the cloud. We're that cloud solution, best-in-class.
We use Mercury hardware, which is very important, by the way. There's a lot of proprietary systems out there where they will sell you a proprietary hardware or a controller. And then if you want to switch to something else, no other software provider can use that.
So we lean in with Mercury as the platform on the hardware side because we always want to have our customers stay with us because we're providing great service and support, not because we sold them something that they can't get away from.
So with Mercury hardware, they have 23 software providers that could use that same controller. So, if you do nothing else besides make sure that you get onto a Mercury platform, you give yourself options and future proof your investments.
We are natively built in the cloud in AWS, which means our architecture is all microservices.
What does that mean? It means we can innovate faster than any company in the space. We had 55 major feature releases last year alone, where your typical on-prem solution with their monolithic code base, they can't be nimble like that. They're typically maybe releasing one or two.
And so when you talk to our end customers, one of the things you'll hear from them is they're just astonished about how quickly we can bring their ideas to fruition. We do it in months and sometimes weeks.
So if you want to learn more about Genea, go to our website. It's getGenea.com. Reach out, we'll set up a meeting, and we'll walk you through our platform.
On April 8 at the NACCU Annual Business Meeting, Kim Pfeffer began her new role as President of the NACCU Board of Directors. Her term will last through the NACCU 2026 Annual Business Meeting. Outgoing President Janet Rauhe passed the ceremonial gavel in front of a packed house in Henderson, NV.
Pfeffer currently serves as Director of the EmoryCard program and Interim Director of Campus Life Technology Services at Emory University in Atlanta. She has spent more than 20 years working in various areas of campus life and auxiliary services, but according to a NACCU announcement, she “found her home in the campus card industry.”
In 2020, she was named NACCU Volunteer of the Year, and she has been on the Board of Directors since 2021. She is a faculty member for the Industry Essentials Institute and a frequent conference and webinar presenter.
She joined Emory in 2018 after working at LaSalle University and Thomas Jefferson University.
Her accolades from – and service to – NACCU and the campus card industry are impressive. In the past decade, she has served in virtually every available volunteer role.
In 2020, she was named NACCU Volunteer of the Year, and she has been on the Board of Directors since 2021. She is a faculty member for the Industry Essentials Institute and a frequent conference and webinar presenter.
Through participation in NACCU professional development programs including the Standards and Guidelines program (SAGs) and the Data Summit, she has continually added to her expertise.
Pfeffer earned a B.A in History from Millersville University and an Ed.M. in Educational Administration from Temple University.
On a personal note, Kim has been a great friend, supporter, and contributor to our team at
CampusIDNews over the years. We thank her for her help and dedication to our industry, and we congratulate her on this new role.
At the CampusIDNews booth (#113) in the NACCU exhibit hall, the CampusIDNews team is shooting short (5-8 minute) video interviews with campus leaders and exhibitors profiling things happening, shaping, or confronting their programs and our industry.
I would like to invite you to participate and share your insights with other NACCU members and higher ed professionals via our audience of 6,500+ subscribers. As a thank you, we'll give you a $50 gift card/poker chip.
Though it need not be earth shattering, we ask that you have something special you’d like to discuss – such as a new initiative, product launch, challenge, or other topic. Think of something your team has done or wrestled with that could be of interest to your peer institutions.
Grab your 15-minute slot using the calendar link below, think about your topic, and get ready to cash in on your $50 gift card/poker chip.
Exhibitors: We are also scheduling video interviews to take place in your booths, so please grab a slot via the calendar link below to let us share your message. Sadly, the $50 thanks you's are reserved for campus reps 🙂
Thanks for supporting NACCU and CampusIDNews.
See you in Las Vegas,
Chris Corum
Editor, CampusIDNews
[email protected]
*Note that the timeslots on the reservation calendar display in your time zone rather than the Las Vegas time zone (PDT). This is so your calendar and reminders will show the correct time when you are on site. Please keep that in mind as you select your timeslot.
Campus reps click here to reserve your time slotExhibitors click here to reserve your time slot
Yale students are visualizing their on-campus dining history in a unique way thanks to a new service called Yale Hospitality Wrapped. It was created by an undergraduate computer science major and based on the incredibly popular Spotify service of the same name.
Spotify launched its Spotify Wrapped in 2016 as a tool to let users see a visual representation of their music preferences over the course of the year. It became a viral marketing phenomenon as millions shared their personal Wrapped on social media. In the years that followed, virtually every streaming service has jumped on the bandwagon and even learning sites like Duolingo have added their own annual wrap-up.
Now it’s campus dining’s turn.
He “reverse engineered” the Transact API to access the HTML data from the user’s account, synthesize the swipe data, and compute the individual account holder’s statistics.
For Yale Hospitality Wrapped, the concept is similar. Show the student when they dined, where they dined, and how often they dined.
Yale undergraduate Anish Lakkapragada created the Chrome extension that – after just one semester – is already used by more than 10% of his classmates.
“Everyone likes to compare and categorize,” he says. “We have things like chicken tender Tuesday and all these traditions, so people want to see how much they go.”
Lakkapragada uses the meal swipe data from Yale’s Transact Campus system to build the users’ dining hall wraps.
He “reverse engineered” the Transact API to access the HTML data from the user’s account, so it grabs the HTML pages, synthesizes the swipe data, and computes the individual account holder’s statistics.
When a student installs the Yale Hospitality Wrapped Chrome Extension, they click the button saying add to Chrome, and it automatically takes them to Yale’s central authentication page where they enter their NetID and password. Once signed in, the extension does the rest.
Campus card and transaction systems hold many more data points beyond meal swipes, and Lakkapragada is eager to explore other areas. Stored value, access control, and rec center transactions are of specific interest.
Currently, Wrapped is available for the fall 2024 semester, but it will be changed to analyze spring 2025 meal swipes at the end of the semester. Though it would not be true to the year-end concept of a typical wrapped, he says the extension could be modified to allow users to set their own timelines.
Lakkapragada has already expanded the dining hall wrapped to another major university, and he emphatically says he’d welcome others to get on board.
Until he built Wrapped, he says he really did not know about his dining usage.
He found he used 156 meals wipes during the semester, averaging 1.5 meals per day. He believes that he, like so many students, under-utilize their meal plans, and Yale Hospitality Wrapped could help them better take advantage of it.
“I pay for three meals wipes per day, but obviously, I'm a student and I’m not waking up for breakfast,” he jokes.
Yale Hospitality Wrapped screenshot
One of the extension’s most popular data points is the diversity score. It is calculated based on the number of dining locations a student visits during the term. If you frequented every location, you’d attain the maximum scored of 100, but if you ate at the closest dining hall for every meal, you score would be zero.
Student are using social media to share and compare diversity scores. Lakkapragada hopes this aspect will encourage students to explore other dining options on campus.
This could be a great benefit to dining services as well.
“We actually did speak with Yale Hospitality about the project, and they were excited and supportive,” he says. “They were surprised and receptive to it.”
Today, the data is disparate and tied only to each unique user. Anonymously aggregating the results across all the participants, however, could give a very different and interesting perspective.
Anish Lakkapragada, Developer of Yale Hospitality Wrapped
Lakkapragada says that is one of the reasons he would like to advance the project from a Chrome extension to a web app. As a website, there would be more flexibility to aggregate data, expand functionality, and include other campuses.
“If any other university that uses Transact is interested – a student, an administrator, a Transact Campus developer – I'm more than receptive to sharing code,” he says.
Why did he do it?
“Creating software is one of my favorite pastimes, and I like seeing my stuff being used on someone else's computer,” he says. “I always feel really happy.”
Anish Lakkapragada is a first-year undergraduate at Yale University double majoring in computer science and mathematics. He encourages anyone interested in contributing to the project or bringing a dining hall wrapped to their campus, to contact him at [email protected].
In this episode of CampusIDNews Chats, Danny Smith, co-founder and co-owner of Color D, announces the company’s acquisition of CardExchange, a long-time partner in identity and credential management solutions. Smith describes that the move is intended to increase ColorID’s ability to offer more integrated and flexible identity management systems for higher ed and other markets.
For more than 20 years, CardExchange has been a key partner in developing sophisticated, custom identity solutions, helping ColorID implement complex credentialing projects. The acquisition cements their long-standing collaboration, enabling a more seamless approach to providing cloud-based identity solutions.
A major focus of the acquisition is CardExchange’s cloud platform, which has been in development for the past four to five years. This system allows institutions to manage credentials across different modalities—physical, mobile, and biometric—while integrating with multiple third-party applications and access control systems.
With the acquisition, Smith says ColorID will be able to provide universities with greater control over their identity infrastructure. Traditionally, identity management has been tied to one-card system or physical access control (PAC) platforms. He argues, however, that universities should own and manage their own identity ecosystems.
This would allow them to switch service providers or integrate new technologies without being locked into a single vendor. The CardExchange acquisition, Smith says, enables ColorID to deliver an agnostic integration platform, helping institutions centralize identity management while maintaining interoperability with existing systems.
One of the most notable applications of CardExchange’s solutions is the NYU project, where the platform was used to unify credentialing across 14 global campuses. The success of this implementation demonstrates the scalability and adaptability of CardExchange’s technology.
Listen to the full interview, by clicking the image at the top of this page.
In this episode of CampusIDNews chat, Jeff Bransfield discusses how campuses are looking at biometrics to replace traditional access control methods like ID cards or mobile credentials.
Biometrics, such as face and palm recognition, are becoming popular in gyms, athletic centers, and other areas because of the convenience they offer. Bransfield explains that managing physical credentials has always been challenging, and using the human body as a credential makes things simpler.
Traditionally, biometrics were used in highly secure labs and areas requiring two-factor authentication, but now they’re expanding into everyday spaces like rec centers and student facilities. The idea is to streamline access and make it easier for students and faculty to move around campus without worrying about carrying a card or phone.
The fingerprint was a little more invasive and you had to touch the reader, so it took longer than some credential-based access controls. Facial identification changes that by reading as you're walking.
There are various types of biometrics—fingerprint, face, iris, and even gait recognition—but Bransfield points out that face and palm recognition are becoming more popular. These modalities are less invasive and easier to deploy than fingerprint systems, which used to be the most common but required more effort to enroll users and manage templates.
As the technology has improved, face and palm recognition have gained traction because they allow for a more frictionless experience. For instance, facial recognition works passively, identifying a user as they approach, making it quicker and easier than older systems.
Privacy concerns have been a longstanding issue with biometrics. People worry about how their data, especially facial images, might be used or stored. Bransfield stresses that biometric systems don’t store actual images of faces or fingerprints. Instead, they create a binary representation—a string of ones and zeros used for identification. This means there’s no photo stored, and the data is secure. Most systems discard the image immediately after creating the template, offering even more privacy protection.
It's becoming more of a convenience layer. It is less for added security than that individuals want to use biometrics to access everyday openings throughout the campus.
Another important distinction Bransfield makes is between facial recognition and facial identification. Facial recognition is often associated with video surveillance and used to pick people out of a crowd, like in airports or large events. This technology is used for security purposes like criminal investigations. On the other hand, facial identification is a more intentional and opt-in process. Users willingly register their face as a credential and use it for specific access, such as entering a building or room. This is more about convenience and less about surveillance.
ASSA ABLOY acquired Control iD, a biometric technology leader in South and Central America, and is now bringing their solutions to the U.S. and Canadian markets. Control iD’s products are particularly useful for higher education and other institutional settings where managing physical credentials is a challenge.
In contrast to facial recognition, facial identification is very much an intentional act of me opting in to use my face as my credential to access a certain area within my facility.
What makes Control iD’s biometric readers stand out is that they function as both readers and controllers. This means they can make access decisions directly at the door, without needing to communicate with a central control panel. They can be deployed as standalone devices or connected to an access control panel, depending on the campus’s needs.
Check out the full interview by clicking the image at the top of this page.
To learn more about Control iD readers, click here.
TRANSCRIPT
Credentials on campus are not always plastic cards or mobile phones anymore.
In a growing number of use cases, biometrics seem to offer a preferred mode of identification and on campus rec centers and athletic facilities and locker rooms and highly secure labs are frequently turning to biometrics to increase security and convenience.
But there may be more to it on campus than even just that. With me today to talk about this is Jeff Bransfield. He's regional director for digital access with ASSA ABLOY. Jeff, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Let's start off by saying or talking about where do you see biometrics heading specifically in the campus market? What's on the horizon?
Yeah, the conversations are evolving every single day. I think the use of biometrics is really becoming more of a common discussion to really bring that convenience layer into security, which doesn't include convenience for so long, right?
So the challenge of the credential and managing the credential, managing that identity has really evolved over time and the technology has increased in capability and availability to really give some more options to use the human being as the credential.
It’s become more of an everyday discussion of how can we leverage the things that we already are to bring us into that security layer.
Okay, and do you see it moving into other applications on campus? I mentioned in the opening that it's not maybe just secure labs anymore.
Yeah, for a long time it was really that conditional layer. It was that two-factor authentication, leveraging biometrics to those ultra secure facilities.
It's becoming more of a convenience layer. It is less for added security than that individuals want to use biometrics to access everyday openings throughout the campus.
Now it's becoming more of a convenience layer that I want to use my finger or face or palm or whatever I'm using for biometrics to access my everyday openings that I'm getting into throughout the campus.
So the rec centers, the athletic facilities, the things that you think about which is difficult to carry a credential to are becoming our everyday topics of discussion on campus, yes?
Lots of modalities out there. We've fingerprint, face, iris, crazy things like Gates, which I guess maybe is not crazy anymore. But with all these biometric modalities, are you starting to see one or a couple kind of become the main ones that campuses are interested in?
Yeah, I think the technology of biometric devices has evolved massively over the last few years.
So in the past, the entry-level price point was always kind of leaning towards fingerprint just because it was less intensive to deploy. But it was also one of the more difficult to manage because the templates needed to be very, very much enrolled on the device.
They needed to be very good capture at the time. So it took a lot of logistical pain to get the fingerprint template involved.
So we're seeing the technology has definitely increased to take things like palm or take things like face or iris. Those are easier to grab, maybe face and palm more than iris as far as the templates.
But yeah, we're seeing some evolution there to start leveraging some of the more automatic parts.
The fingerprint was a little more invasive. You still had to touch and do those things. So it actually took longer than some of the credential-based access controls versus facial identification. It's just getting it as you're walking.
So it's really that frictionless deployment that we're seeing that people are grasping.
As an industry, I know we've worked hard for a long time to get people past the fear of biometric technologies. By trying to push the message that your images aren't stored. You're not storing a picture of my face in the system that can be used for other purposes. It's really just a string of zeros and ones that form a template that's created from the measurements and the certain parts of my face or my fingerprint or whatever the modality might be. Been fighting it for decades, maybe even at this point. Are you still seeing that concern on campus? Are you having to fight that battle every time you step on a campus still?
I have that conversation every day. And that's good because people are learning the process. But yes, to your point, technically it is. It's storing a binary representation of my face. It's not storing a photo of my face.
It's all ones and zeros. It's just the algorithm that it's processing all of those data points.
We even have devices that can go so far to say, just discard a photo, don't keep a photo.
When I walk up, it doesn't even show my cardholder photo in the system.
In contrast to facial recognition, facial identification is very much an intentional act of me opting in to use my face as my credential to access a certain area within my facility.
So you can really go to that layer of conserving that privacy.
From the other side of the spectrum, the conversation of the human understanding of what biometrics really is, in regard to face, for example, we're having a lot of conversations around facial identification and facial recognition.
They're completely different technologies and different use cases.
Facial recognition is typically applied to a video surveillance layer to where it's identifying a face from a crowd in general surveillance for use for forensic find, criminal investigation, et cetera.
These are used in high traffic environments. You see them in airports, sporting events, malls, et cetera.
Facial identification, though, is very much an intentional act of me opting in to using my face as my credential to access a certain area within my facility.
So they're different conversations and it's very intentional.
I'm opting in to registering my face as my credential and I'm knowingly doing that act as I approach the opening, versus just walking into a general population area and being picked out of the crowd.
So they're two different processes and two conversations that we're having.
And it's very important for people to understand when deploying facial identification that it's very much an intentional use for frictionless access control leveraging biometrics.
A couple of years ago, late in 2022, Asa Abloy acquired a company called Control iD that has some pretty cool looking biometric readers. Can you give us a little update on that? And let me know where that might fit in the campus setting.
Absolutely. In October, 2022, it's been almost two years ago, the acquisition was complete with Control iD. Control iD has been doing business in access control, biometrics, process automation, time and attendance in South and Central America for years.
We just this year have been bringing these products to the United States, Canada, and we're really excited about the opportunities that it's granting our teams as we're going out and providing these solutions to our customers, especially our institutional customers like higher education.
A lot of the market's been asking for this. Control iD has been a fantastic partner. It's been a fantastic add to our portfolio.
The total cost per opening really, really starts going down at that point with a panel-less deployment.
It's revolutionary in what it can do and all of the different aspects in higher education, but also, we're having a conversation with K through 12, commercial, you name it, where people are really getting into that convenience of the credential, because that's the hard part of access control is managing that piece of plastic or managing that mobile credential or even better securing those credentials.
We're really, really excited about Control iD being part of our brand. You can see over my shoulder has really been fun to have as an option.
All right, so I've got one more question about the Control iD readers. You've talked about them being kind of unique and even maybe revolutionary. Tell us why, what's different about that reader than other devices?
Yeah, so we're working really well with a lot of our OEM software, OEM partners to develop native integrations to the product.
What that means is that we can actually deploy the Control iD, so ID face that you see over my shoulder, it actually is a reader controller.
It's got an external access module built into it that actually allows for you to process all of those yes and no decisions at the opening.
I can wire all of my peripheral devices to the access module itself. So I can deploy, especially with either standalone or with some of our OEM integrations, a panel-less integration.
I don't need to rely on an access control panel to make those decisions. I can actually deploy it with a panel-less deployment.
Our total cost per opening really, really starts going down at that point.
I assume too it's great for really remote locations too and things like an area where it might be the athletic locker room where it's a very fixed number of people and you know where they are.
Yeah, so you can deploy standalone. We can do it connected to a panel if you so choose. We can do our OSTP out or we can actually do a native integration as I spoke earlier.
Awesome. Okay, well it's a great update. They really are cool looking. I hope to check them out at a show or something like that.
Anytime. I know more about biometrics now than I ever thought I would, so.
Well, Jeff, thank you. We've been talking with Jeff Bransfield, Regional Director for Digital Access with Asa Abloy and I appreciate you joining us.
Thanks Chris.
Just off the University of Minnesota campus, the neighborhood of Dinkytown has seen an uptick in violent crime in recent years. The issue is important to the institution because it is an where many students reside in both apartments and even dorms.
In an attempt to make the area safer for students, the university and city police departments are cooperating on a new campus safety center. Locating the center in Dinkeytown is important because the university’s main police station is more than one-half mile away.
Anyone with a UCard can scan at the main entrance to access the facility to study, receive self-defense training, file police reports, and get legal advice.
“The Off-Campus Safety Center, operated by the Department of Public Safety, brings resources and community to the heart of Dinkytown,” explains the University on its Safe Campus site. “Along with opportunities to connect with UMPD, the safety center will offer community engagement, safety classes, and student space to its visitors.”
As they describe, this isn’t a normal police station. The safety center brings law enforcement to the community, but it also provides a place for students to gather, learn, and feel safe.
There are dedicated study areas and student meeting rooms, and even an area for self-defense training. In the part of the center dedicated for law enforcement use, students can file police reports and get legal advice.
As reported by NBC-affiliate KARE11, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said, “We've heard the concerns … both from parents and students on campus about safety [in] this part of town, and this safety center is an example that we are listening, that those concerns are being heard.”
Anyone with a UCard can scan at the main entrance to access the facility.
The center is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. until 11 p.m.
Topanga provides software to drive reusable container programs in on-campus dining using the institution's existing mobile ordering app and ID card. Working with campus apps and transaction systems, it lets students check-out and return containers, cutting waste and saving money for the institution.
The software is live at 59 campuses across North America and has experienced significant growth in the past two years. Strong partnerships with food service providers including Aramark and Sodexo, continues to help drive adoption.
We have other exciting integrations that we're working on with Transact and other mobile ordering solutions going live in the next few weeks
“We do not manufacture the packaging ourselves,” says Page Schult, the company’s co-founder and CEO. “We're completely agnostic, which allows you to use what you already have on hand, or we can help you procure new packaging for our manufacturing partners.”
Building the option to request reusable to go containers into existing mobile ordering apps is a great addition to the offering. The Topanga Grubhub integration is a popular option, and others are on their way.
“We have a couple other exciting payment card integrations that we're working on with Transact and other order ahead and mobile ordering solutions that are going live in the next few weeks,” adds Schult.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hello and welcome to another installment of Campus ID News Chats. I am your host Chris Corum, publisher and editor of Campus ID News. I'll be asking the questions today about an issue that I care a lot about. It's sustainability and environmental protections and issues on campus and how we can affect that, and specifically how our campus card programs, our apps on campus, can help dining services to redirect some waste from landfills.
To get to this topic and answer some questions is my guest, Page Schult. She's co-founder and CEO of Topanga, and her company helps campuses reduce and replace disposable to-go containers with reusable ones. So Page, thanks for joining us today.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
So let's start. Tell us about the importance of reusables and why specifically in campus dining environments this can make a big difference.
So campus environments and campus dining specifically are really interesting for reuse, and that there's kind of a lot of pressures driving towards sustainability.
For example, students are increasingly choosing campuses and schools that have sustainable practices, presidents and major stakeholders at universities are increasingly kind of pushing for more sustainable practices for impact reporting and to really show off these stats to incoming students.
And dining is where a lot of that waste and sustainability is so tangible.
Like it's very, very apparent when food is being wasted or when all the single use to-go packaging is filling up the trash cans across campus.
It's a lot less visible if your science building is running on renewable energy.
I think because of that, sustainability and dining gets a lot of attention because it's really easy to see the shifts.
And reuse specifically is awesome for campus environments because it's really high reuse rates in terms of it's a semi-closed environment.
So the students who are getting to go every day on campus are typically getting to go and then going within a mile radius from where they got that food packaging.
They're going back to their dorm, they're going back to the library to study, and then they're in a position where in the next day or two, they can drop that container off, it can be reused and sanitized just like any other dish, and then it can be ready for another student to get to go.
So that kind of turnover and that kind of built-in client base that's going to keep coming back for more really helps reuse thriving campus environments.
Okay, so what inspired you to start the company? Why this topic and then a few details like how long you've been around, how's it grown, how many campuses are you serving, those kinds of things?
So me and my two co-founders, we started this company in 2020 and it was actually very different.
Today we are a software company, but prior to being a software company, we actually ran a commercial kitchen in Los Angeles where we were packaging food in reusable containers and delivering it to customers like a milkman-style market.
This was an amazing experience because we had to go through the full kitchen certification process.
We were working day in and day out with dishwashing machines and three-compartment sinks and really understanding what it means firsthand to kind of reuse in a fast-paced commercial kitchen.
It was through this that we actually built our software. So we first built our software for ourselves.
That business was going really well, but we said, hey, if our goal is to make as big of an impact globally on reducing unnecessary waste from kitchens, we can do so a lot more effectively by taking the software that we've built and delivering it to other environments versus just continuing to do this ourselves.
So that's really when we made the shift to say what other types of kitchens and kitchen environments and dining programs can we support with this technology?
And through that is when we got connected to two of our earliest clients, Ohio State University and Boston University, and we had some great conversations where we understood that the problems that we had solved for ourselves through our software were problems they were experiencing, and huge pain points they were experiencing, and trying to launch reuse.
So that's been how we got into the campus space. It was accidental, but now it's amazing. It's been a wonderful space to work in.
We're live at 59 campuses across North America and really excited about kind of the growth we've seen in the past one to two years since we've been here.
I have seen some stats about putting in perspective the amount of savings and things that that's been across the campuses. They're pretty impressive to me. Any comes to the top of your mind, I'm sure you know them by heart.
Yeah, there's a lot of different stats that I could throw at you, but I think one that's probably particularly interesting to focus on is one of our campuses like Boston University, where we've been able to show there that this program, the Reuse Pass program, has reached over 90% of the undergrad campus, so it has huge reach across the types of students who are using this.
They've seen in the past year over 78% reduction in disposables, so not just our people trying this program, but they're truly using it day in and day out, and they've seen about $274,000 in program margins versus like just if they were going with single use as they had before or a reused solution without this kind of track and trace system of accountability that Topanga's Reuse Pass program provides.
So that's obviously like a huge school with a huge retail footprint, but the reality is that those kind of stats on how broad of reach we can get on campus and how many kind of single use transactions we can replace with reuse, those are really kind of the crux of what goes into understanding the ROI opportunity for your program, and I will say throughout our sales process, it's really important to us that we're working with schools that believe that there is an environmental and an economic opportunity for reuse, and we'll walk through all of that math and all of that modeling from the get go to make sure we're setting these programs up for success.
Can you walk us through in detail the student experience with the system? You know, I'm going in to get my food in the dining hall and then I can …
So there's actually a few different ways that this can come to life kind of depending on the campus setup, the environment, and what kind of card and mobile ordering providers that they're using on campus.
The simplest form is, you know, it's a non-integrated experience.
Students go to the web app, app.reusepass.com, they sign up using their cell phone number, and then in their Apple Wallet, they kind of get their reuse pass QR code.
And this is a lot like checking out a library book.
Every time they go to, you know, get takeout from their residential dining hall, they show their Apple Wallet QR code, the operator will scan that QR code, scan the QR RFID code on the container, and that kind of completes the checkout experience.
So that's like the most straightforward just out of the box.
That could be live within a few weeks on a campus.
And then we also have a few different layers that we can add on to support more complex and more diverse dining environments.
So for example, like the Boston University school example that I mentioned, they're a huge Grubhub school. We've integrated with Grubhub mobile ordering systems to create an even more like seamless student experience that allows you to kind of order ahead.
You as a student, you go through the Grubhub ordering flow like you normally would, you select that you'd like a reuse pass container at checkout.
At that point, our system is connected with Grubhub, and we kind of get your student ordering data, and we process that so we can see what your reuse pass QR code is.
That same QR code that you see in the Apple Wallet, Grubhub passes us back of house.
And then the team that's fulfilling your order sees that QR code on the chip that prints out, they scan the QR code, scan the QR code on the container, and your order is ready at the pickup shelf where it's already been checked out to you.
So we have a couple other kind of exciting payment card integrations that we're working on with Transact and other order ahead and mobile ordering solutions that are going live in the next few weeks.
So I would say that integrating within the systems that campus are already using is really important to us to ensure that it's a seamless student experience, but also a seamless operator experience.
I was curious, like, you know, we get that level of app fatigue where, you know, do you want to have, you know, the more that can be integrated and partner offerings so that we're not having to download specific apps for a million different things, I think for everybody, even students can be a benefit. So those partnerships are great. I suppose it makes it easy to work with a Grubhub campus or down the road Transact or whatever others it might be, the work's already been done. So the deployment then for that, for a campus that partners with them, you know, the hard work was done on the first one and now the rollout goes more quickly.
Yeah, absolutely.
Having these kind of channel partners and being able to work in a space like the College of University dining space where everybody is really keen on like peer-to-peer learning and just like spreading learning from each other makes it so much easier to kind of continue to iterate and improve our programs as we build.
So that's the student side of things. How about the campus side of things? So I'm watching this, I'm a campus, I've wanted to do this for a long time or I like the idea of it. What do they do?
So from a kind of like, you know, getting in touch and how we could start a perspective, again, like we, we love working within the campus space, we have great partners with Aramark and Sodexo and all of the great service providers.
And so like kind of getting in the weeds and figuring out what type of program you're likely have is really important to us.
We're really keen on setting up potential new clients with existing client partners and having them do like site visits and tour our campuses environment as is possible.
So you can see firsthand what this program looks like and what type of program you want to build.
And I say that because exactly like, if you're just you want to launch a reusable to go program at like one of your residential dining halls, it's like medium to low volume and you really just want to get live and see what's happening.
That's great.
We can get you live in a few weeks and we can start small, really figure out what works and build from there.
Or there's other schools that they'll come to us and they'll say, hey, by 2025, we wanted to be completely zero waste campus.
We have like 10 residential dining halls, like 30 different retail environments, two different mobile ordering and card payment providers.
Like, can you help us get started? And that's where again, the answer is yes, but there's going to be a bit more lead time because you have to navigate those integrations.
What are the shifts in operator and student experiences across dining locations?
How are we going to operationalize like collections and returns these containers?
So it really is designed to be flexible and support you wherever you're at.
I would say the main kind of considerations are one, do you already have packaging or to procure packaging?
We do not manufacture the packaging ourselves. We're completely agnostic, which allows you to use what you already have on hand or we can help you procure new packaging for our manufacturing partners.
That's kind of like one of the big physical sides to getting a program live that will typically start in on right when we're working with a new partner and get those wheels turning.
From there, it's really kind of, again, the scope and the scale that you want to start with versus what you want to grow into.
Typically for some of our larger implementations, we'll come on site, we'll do a site visit.
Like I mentioned, a lot of our team has spent time working in kitchens and restaurants in the past and we're truly passionate, not just about the sustainability side, but also the dining side.
So we'll come on site and we'll help you kind of map out to a tee what this program is going to look like and what the flows are going to look like in your system to make it as streamlined as possible.
So you did mention this at the beginning, but I think that the point came up there when you were talking about you're really the app provider and the software provider, the intelligence and the reporting logistics, all the pieces like that, pardon me, rather than, you know, we sell bowls and lids and things like that.
So give us a little more detail on what's the beauty of the app? What more is happening there? What does the kid get out of it, but also what does the university get out of it or the campus get out of that from reporting and things like that?
I did kind of say this before, but kind of at its core, how the system works is it's like checking out a library book. So it's a one-to-one system of accountability. Each time a container is checked out, it's checked out to a specific student or a specific diner.
That diner then has a full record of kind of their transactions, so to speak, in their ReusePass app. So they can see how many containers they've checked out, from which locations, when and where they're due back, what happens if they're not returned on time.
Some of our schools will charge a late fee.
If a container isn't returned within a specific amount of time, that's where some of these payment card integrations like what we're working on with Transact really come into play to make that charging process seamless, and the student sees that real-time in their app.
In addition to the more fun stuff, such as what has their impact been and how many people are participating at their campus and kind of what is that gamification element that makes you feel good by taking this action to reuse instead of choosing single use.
So it's really kind of the crux of accountability.
Again, it's a web app.
So our goal is not just to have you download an app and have you glued to your phone, but we also have systems in place to kind of send you those proactive nudges and bring the program to life.
So for example, we have an SMS-based nudging program.
So first time you check out a container, you'll get a welcome text explaining the roles of the road, and then each time you have a container that's late or overdue, we'll send you a quick nudge saying, hey, don't forget to return this, click here to find your closest return location.
So in a perfect world, nobody's ever charged a late fee and everything's burned on time.
But we also know not everything's a perfect world.
So that's kind of why we have these systems built.
And then beyond the app, we also have a really robust campus ambassador program, which I think is something that we're really proud of because it allows us to like bring the dining organization's mission of sustainability, like they're doing this for a reason.
It allows us to kind of bring that to life through the students and they'll do tabling activations or they'll paint murals or they'll pick up trash in a local park.
All of these really cool ways to kind of build community around this great cause in real life and kind of bring reuse past to your campus in a way that's not just, hey, I'm checking out a container because the school says I have to, I have to, but it's really like, hey, this is an amazing initiative that campus is doing and it's great to be a part of it.
Awesome. I'm on board with anything we can do to help those kinds of kinds of issues. It was great, Page. I appreciate you joining us. Thanks for the great info and, and I, you know, we'll talk soon again.
Thank you so much.
And of course, thanks to all of you for listening in. If you have an idea for a future episode of Campus ID News Chats, shoot me a note at chris at campusidnews.com and we'll see you next time.
Several weeks ago, we learned Roper Industries, the parent company of CBORD, was acquiring Transact in a deal that surprised the industry. Together with NACCU, CampusIDNews is seeking input from our subscribers and members. While information regarding the purchase is still forthcoming, we are wondering what questions or thoughts you may have.
Responses from NACCU members and CampusIDNews subscribers will be anonymized and used to guide the information gathering process.
We will anonymize and compile the responses we receive into categories, creating a series of overarching questions. It is our intention to use these questions to help guide our discussions, as we seek information on how this may impact our industry and how we can best support the higher ed community.
Please take a moment and send me an email with your thoughts.
Thank you,
Chris Corum, Publisher
CampusIDNews
[email protected]
