Campus card system provider, CBORD, has partnered with FreedomPay to provide higher education and other verticals with increased payment data security. The partnership will provide CBORD with access to the FreedomPay Commerce Platform, enabling CBORD customers to deploy a PCI-validated, point-to-point encryption (P2PE) solution with EMV, NFC, Pay-at-Table, dynamic currency conversion and card data tokenization capabilities.

Higher One Holdings, Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to sell the company to an affiliate of Blackboard for $5.15 in cash per share. The all-cash sale price represents a 37.3% premium over the closing price of the Higher One Holdings shares on June 29, 2016 at an equity value of $260 million.

ACI, provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, and Ohio’s Cedarville University have partnered to facilitate the university’s tuition payments across multiple channels. The partnership will leverage ACI’s UP Bill Payment Solution that integrates into Colleague by Ellucian, to simplify Cedarville’s tuition payment processing.

BadgePass, Inc. has acquired the business and assets of Boomerang Payment Solutions, LLC, as part of a deal that will bring new financial aid disbursement capabilities to the BadgePass portfolio.

The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse is putting its current HigherOne ID card out to pasture in favor of a new EagleID that will better align the campus with PCI compliance considerations.The new IDs will assume the same functionalities of the current HigherOne credentials with the noted exception of the debit card utility for those students that have a HigherOne checking account.

An increasingly common question for campuses is the future of the campus card declining balance account as a method of student payment. Declining balance accounts have been a primary facet of campus card systems for nearly the last three decades, but with an increasing number of students arriving on campus with a bank debit card already in hand, does the campus card declining balance account still have a seat at the table? Heartland’s Fred Emery discusses the payment options available to the modern student on campus, and plots a future for campus card declining balance accounts.

EMV is focused on reducing fraud at the point of sale through fraud protection enhancements based on chip card technology. It’s a move that adds dynamic data to the transaction stream and authenticates that the card is present at the point of purchase. In this installment of the CR80News Expert Panel Series, Heartland’s Fred Emery discusses EMV, some of the adjustments that are to be expected in buyer and merchant habits, and why the new payment standard should be embraced by those within higher ed.