Campus credential and commerce solution provider, TouchNet, recently outlined a host of reasons universities should pay mind to their declining balance accounts on campus. In the company's "10 Ways Declining Balance Accounts Can Benefit Your Campus," there seems to be a common thread between campuses that have fared well through the last couple years, and healthy declining balance offerings.

More specifically, the institutions who are leading the pack are those that have reimagined the campus experience, eliminated outdated systems and processes, and implemented student-centric solutions. Among the measures campuses have taken, TouchNet says, is a maximizing of declining balance opportunities using the campus card, with the goal of connecting students to more services and resources through their student ID.

TouchNet's benefits of a robust declining balance offering include:

For students and parents:

1. Funds loaded to the campus card give students a payment method that can be used across the institution.
2. Parents and guardians can easily add money to the student’s campus card for on-campus spending.
3. Offers a safe and easy way for students to manage their spending.
4. When dining, printing or flexible account balances decline, reloading more funds to the campus card is easy.

For campus management:

1. Institutions can entice more vendors to campus with a “closed loop” payment option by offering vendors a reduction in credit card fees, and easing the headache of managing cash in their machines.
2. Student discounts and grants can be conveniently distributed and managed on their campus card.
3. The configurability of declining balances allows institutions to customize accounts. Campuses can use various types of declining balance “buckets” such as taxable, non-taxable items, and decision-tree options created for when student funds are depleted.
4. Simplifies cash management systems on campus, supports real-time transactions, eases monitoring, and provides student engagement and preference data.
5. The reduction of cash on campus keeps vending machines and points of sale more secure.
6. Campus cards can be added as a payment option for order-ahead solutions that enable contactless transactions, check in and access, and virtual queueing.

TouchNet sees a clear link between institutions that are doing the campus card right and those that have healthy declining balance options in their cash management infrastructure.

Using the campus card as a closed-loop payment option, which functions like a credit card but without the fees, can make purchasing goods and services easy for students. For parents, this functionality gives them a convenient means to add funds and monitor spending while administrators have complete visibility and oversight of payments campus wide.

For more on declining balance and the campus card, read TouchNet's full write up.