It’s grown increasingly difficult to ignore the rise and impact of mobile apps on campus. Not all are relevant to the campus card space specifically, but an increasing number of mobile apps are reaching many of the same touch points that the student ID card does. This idea was the inspiration for our “Next-gen apps merge campus ID and student life” piece from 2015.

The University of Montana examines its card system data for wide variety of reasons, looking at nearly every function of the card system. To better shed light on the card data efforts at Montana, Blackboard Transact will host a free, live webinar on Wednesday, June 27 at 1:00 PM EST. Webinar attendees will hear from Maggie McCarthy, manager of Montana’s Griz Card Center, about how examining card data has made the Griz Card Office an invaluable service center for a number of campus departments.

A Northeastern University spin-off company is leveraging Amazon’s Echo Dot smart speaker to help improve the student experience on campus. The company, n-Powered, is providing incoming freshmen with the speakers, equipped with an Echo Skill called Husky Helper.

Though details are not available at this time, CR80News has confirmed that Assa Abloy is working with Apple on their efforts to add student ID cards to Apple Wallet. The company shared the following statement exclusively with CR80News: “This fall Apple is bringing the ability to add student ID cards to Apple Wallet. ASSA ABLOY […]

The iPhone and Apple Watch will soon serve as a new student ID credential on campuses across the country following an announcement at the company’s 2018 WWDC keynote. Though Blackboard wasn’t mentioned by name in the keynote, each of the flagship campuses listed on stage is a Blackboard Transact client and the company has now confirmed its role alongside Apple in bringing this technology to the campus card industry.

The University of Arizona is making significant strides in the realm of campus card data interpretation thanks to the work of university researcher, Sudha Ram. Ram’s Smart Campus research is tracking students’ social interactions and daily routines via CatCard usage — Arizona’s student ID — and leveraging that information to make predictions about freshman retention.

Brooklyn College students can now use electronic IDs at security checkpoints around its urban campus. The eIDs are seen as a way to improve the college’s security, and are being used in a visual-only verification capacity.

Viewed by some as the Holy Grail of issued identification for its flexibility, mobility, and interoperability across physical and logical applications, mobile credentials are making inroads across numerous verticals. But rather than acting as a competitive form factor to the traditional, physical card, mobile IDs securely provisioned onto mobile devices can most effectively function in harmony with cards as a natural supplement.