Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Fully cloud-architected transaction system, data analytics platform, privilege control solution take center stage
In a recent interview with CampusIDNews, Danny Johnson, Regional VP of Sales for Transact, highlights the company’s new IDX platform as well as other innovations.
He describes IDX as the first fully cloud-architected, multi-tenant transaction system in higher education. By operating in the cloud, IDX unlocks new opportunities for campuses to access and use their data in innovative ways.
The Transact Insights product delivers advanced data visualization tools for both the company’s payments and commerce products. Institutions can monitor spending trends, payment preferences, transaction times, and purchasing behaviors in real time, allowing them to fine-tune student services.
Insights integrates seamlessly with Transact’s cloud point-of-sale system, and for institutions with existing analytics tools, a streamlined real-time data feed is available. This flexibility ensures campuses can harness actionable intelligence regardless of their current technology setup.
Mobile credentials remain one of Transact’s most successful offerings, purpose-built for the unique demands of higher education. Beyond access control, mobile credentials integrate with diverse campus systems – from library checkouts to recreation centers –many of which run on legacy platforms. Transact’s SIS payload feature addresses this by transmitting student ID numbers to these systems in formats they understand, eliminating the need for costly system overhauls.
Johnson also introduces Transact Verify, a cloud-based reader that replaces older iValidate and PR5000 devices. This versatile solution supports event attendance, meal plan verification, point-of-sale functions, and more.
Check out the full conversation by clicking on the image at the top of this page.
TRANSCRIPT
My name is Danny Johnson. I've been with Transact since 2005. This is a very exciting time for us since we recently merged with CBORD. It added all our clients together, so we are now a very, very large company servicing the higher ed industry here in the U.S. and worldwide.
What we're most excited about, especially at this NACCU conference, is our IDX product. It's named for a brand-new ID experience.
It is, as far as we know, the first and only cloud architected and designed transaction system that truly uses all the multi-tenant, cloud microservices.
It's incredibly exciting where we're going.
We're actually consolidating six transaction systems all into one.
So, this one, we're investing heavily.
As far as I know, this is the largest investment in the architecture of a transaction system ever seen in our industry.
I think our clients are ready for a multi-tenant true cloud system.
It enables something that I think will be revolutionary for our industry, and that's access to the data in new and creative ways.
By moving to the cloud, it gives us abilities to do things with the data that we just couldn't do before.
Insights, another product that we've recently released, is a perfect example of that.
We first released Insights into our integrated payments vertical, and our clients are using it already to look at how students are making payments on campus, what types of payment methods they're using, and using that business intelligence to really modify their processes and become more efficient.
We're seeing the same thing in our commerce side as well. We've released Insights for all our commerce products.
Insights gives campuses real time data on where students are spending money, how long it's taking for them to access food, what they're ordering, and more.
Our cloud point of sale is feeding information into Insights where campuses can see in real time exactly where students are spending their money, how long it's taking for them to access food, how they're paying for that, what they're ordering and where.
With that amount of information, campuses can fine tune the student experience and design it exactly the way that they want.
A lot of campuses already have something that they're using to visualize their data. In those cases, we've streamlined Insights into just a real time data feed.
So, if you already have a platform that you're using to model your business intelligence, great. What we'll do is we'll just strip down all the data, feed that into your system, instead of using the full Insights product.
We have different flavors for different types of institutions depending on what their resources are, what they already have in place and how they go about their business.
Mobile credentials continue to be a very, very successful product for us.
We are by far the dominant mobile credential in the higher ed market, and I think there's a couple of reasons for that.
One is it's designed for higher ed.
Although mobile credentials have been around for a long time and access control companies offer in the commercial space, it's very different in higher ed in the way that students use their mobile credential.
The SIS payload capability of our mobile credentials allows us to send the student number to legacy systems in areas like libraries, rec centers, and meal plans.
It's not always just the credential that you need to pass from your phone over to a reader.
Campuses are like mini cities.
They have departments, they have different aging systems, they have platforms on campus like in the library, how students check out books, in the rec center, taking tests.
There are all kinds of platforms that are using the campus ID today. Different systems that are using the campus ID are sometimes legacy or outdated. You just don't have the ability to have a mobile credential number inputted as the student number in those systems.
We understand that because we've been in this business for 40-plus years.
So, we've included a payload in that mobile credential read.
We call it SIS payload, and it basically allows us to send the student number through the mobile credential read to those legacy systems.
This way you don't have to upgrade absolutely everything on campus.
We've created ways and phasing to allow campuses to move in that direction and not have to do everything.
That's one of the differences of partnering with a company in the space for mobile credential as opposed to using an access control mobile credential out there.
With the merger and the partnership with CBORD, it's even more exciting.
CBORD has also been a pioneer in the space, bringing those access control mobile credentials to their campuses.
Now they have access to the Transact mobile credential as well.
We're bringing choices.
We expect to continue working with Allegion and with HID for those mobile credentials on those campuses when they already have that infrastructure in place.
If they don't and they're still planning it, they have access to the Transact mobile credential in the future as well, too.
We always show up strong here at NACCU. It's a very, very important organization and conference for us. We have a big team here.
We always have a large booth, and we try to bring as many of our products to showcase and touch and feel, look at them and really get an experience for them.
We also have our brand-new product called Transact Verify here as well.
It is a purpose-built reader that we can use for event attendance. It will eventually replace the iValidate product that we've had out on the market for a while, as well as a reader called the PR 5000 that many campuses are using for point of sale and for activities, for meal swipes, for meal plans to go into dining halls.
All of that will be replaced with a very, very elegant cloud solution called Transact Verify.
In addition to that, we have our entire commerce platform.
We have our mobile ordering kiosks where the guests here at NACCU can look through, see what it's like for students to order food, how they can update the prices and menu pictures across their entire commerce platform. And not just through mobile ordering and kiosks, but also their point of sale – all by just updating one location as opposed to having multiple systems that they have to go out and update those prices, the pictures, or change the description, change the product names, the foods, and that sort of thing.
Now they can just do it once and it will automatically change across their entire platform.
