After growing company to major market leader, Mr. Lane announces retirement

By Andy Williams, Contributing Editor

When Bruce Lane signed on with campus card system provider CBORD 22 years ago, it was still a small company. As he explains it, he was “employee No. 14.” But today, CBORD has some 475 employees and serves hundreds of colleges and universities, primarily in the U.S. and Canada, but also in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

He had a lot to do with that growth, but now the 53-year-old Lane is planning to call it quits by the end of this year, retiring, at least from CBORD, but not from business life. 

Heartland Payment Systems, a leading credit and debit card processor, has been selected by Pennsylvania’s Slippery Rock University to deliver contactless payments by cell phone to students and faculty. This summer, 8,500 students, faculty and staff will receive a new campus ID card and a separate contactless token designed for use with their mobile phones. Using either the card or the phone, they will be able to make payments at on-campus locations as well as participating merchants in the surrounding community. 

Onity has created a new customer-driven electronic locking system, Integra 5, for the education market. The Integra 5 features a client-server architecture, high-speed execution, and great overall security. The Integra 5’s central architecture allows the system administrator to easily apply upgrades and perform system maintenance. 

As reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, some universities in Wisconsin are getting heat from students that are not happy with their campus card banking programs. The article reports that at least two of the campus card accounts have higher overdraft fees than other area institutions.

Administrators from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh responded to the Sentinel article in the Fond du Lac Reporter, stating that “the story did not fully and clearly describe the nature of and reasons for such cards.” It states that U.S. Bank “competitively bid via the UW System procurement policies and practices” and “provides a highly efficient, effective way to deliver a sophisticated, all-in-one card service.”

“While recognizing that larger financial institutions typically offer a wider array of services and thus, may charge higher fees for some of those services,” the response continues, “we will use this opportunity to review the fee policies associated with offering our students the best services for the best value.”

Editor’s note: Perhaps we should also remember that overdrafting our account is not a practice to be accepted or condoned. It is bad financial management that we should educate against–rather than striving to make less painful.  

Higher One announced that HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College, has signed an agreement to implement Higher One’s OneDisburse® Refund Management hoping to improve the disbursement of refunds to their students. HACC will begin using the service sometime in August of this year. HACC will benefit from the elimination of time-consuming functions, paper checks and possible errors while experiencing cost savings throughout the organization. As part of the service, students will also be able to choose how they receive their refunds. 

by Andy Williams, Contributing Editor

A time tested business adage suggests that one key to success is to give customers a choice. That is one of the driving principles behind Ireland-based SmartCentric’s latest move, adding support for the iCLASS contactless smart card to its campus card system through one of the best known contactless solutions providers, HID Global.

SmartCentric recently announced the addition of iCLASS to SmartCentric’s SmartCity platform with expected availability later this year. 

The Biometrics Consortium, a leading industry group, defines biometrics as “automated methods of recognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic. Among the features measured are; face, fingerprints, hand geometry, handwriting, iris, retinal, vein, and voice. Biometric technologies are becoming the foundation of an extensive array of highly secure identification and personal verification solutions.”