Food service provider Chartwells Higher Ed is experimenting with a new approach to on-campus dining with virtual or delivery-only kitchens that the company calls “ghost kitchens.” Despite the virtual or delivery only model being implemented prior to the pandemic, the new normal has more universities than ever before exploring the ghost kitchen formula.

Trusted identity solutions provider, HID Global, announced an expansion to its Seos credential family, adding two new products to the line. The Seos 16K marks the first credential certified to the highest IT security level with 16 kilobytes of memory, and Seos Essential is the company’s new, single-application credential that delivers trusted security and data protection for less complex deployments.

Transact has been busy both domestically and abroad, headlined by an expanded workforce at its Chennai, India location and the recent completion of its annual PCI compliance assessments. The added personnel in Chennai brings the total staff to 70 individuals at the company’s IT product development hub. The annual PCI assessments, meanwhile, include successful completions of the SOC 2 Type 2 examination, PCI DSS assessment, and penetration tests.

Mercer University is in year two of its Transact Mobile Credential deployment, and to mark the success of the initiative, Transact has pulled together a video highlighting the major benefits that the Mercer community has seen since launch. To learn more about daily life with Transact Mobile Credential, CR80News recently caught up with Ken Boyer, Associate Vice President for Auxiliary Services at Mercer University.

A series of new reports from the International Card Manufacturers Association (ICMA) suggest that COVID could be impacting demand across the global plastic card market. The ICMA report projects that the total value of the global plastic cards market has fallen by $3B over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the number of cards manufactured worldwide falling by 19.7% from 37.1B in 2019 to 29.8B in 2020.

In this Chat, we catch up with NACCU Executive Director, Dawn Thomas, to discuss the upcoming NACCU Annual Conference. For the first time in the Association’s history, the Annual Conference will be held virtually. Thomas explains what this new format will mean for attendees and how the experience at this year’s event will be like no other.

Integrated campus payment, ID and commerce solutions provider, Transact, has launched its new “One Transact” brand campaign, representing a transformation to “One Vision, One Mission, One Company, and One Mindset.” The enterprise-wide initiative began inside the organization and will reach every internal and external touchpoint by the end of the year.

In this CR80Chat, Allegion’s Business Development Manager, Jeff Koziol discusses the limitations of the age-old brass key. We talk so much about the emerging technologies in the access control space that we almost entirely forget that many campuses are still leaning on metal keys for accessing secure or sensitive areas on campus.

The CR80News editorial team is conducting a brief survey to better understand what readers would like to learn more about in the coming year. Specifically, we’re interested in learning which aspects of the card transaction system and which student facing services are most important to your campus in 2021. And as a thank you, survey respondents will be entered to win one of three $50 Amazon gift cards.

Cedarville University has replaced student mailboxes on campus with automated, smart lockers in an attempt to expedite package pickup and help reduce COVID exposure. Every time a student receives a package, the university’s new TZ SMArt Locker system sends the student an email or text directing them to an assigned smart locker where their package has been placed.