When I first began to work in the campus card industry, several early pioneering card programs were trying to figure out how to make the ID an ATM card. That was more than a decade ago, and slowly the ties between campus card programs and financial institutions moved beyond the pioneers to become an accepted part of the campus card landscape. The heyday of the banking relationship seemed to peak in the mid to late 1990s when many of the largest banks in the country were competing with regional institutions, community banks, and credit unions. They were are vying to secure that coveted exclusive access to provide service via the campus card.