Virginia Tech is the latest campus to install touchless biometric readers in its dining halls, deploying MorphoWave hand readers from IDEMIA. Virginia Tech is now the second university in as many weeks to announce its use of the MorphoWave product to enable student access to campus dining, following a release from St. Thomas University last week.

Students at East Carolina University are now able to use their student ID cards to make purchases at more off campus locations. The university’s card office has added the ability for the ECU 1 Card and declining balance tender, Bounty Bucks, to be accepted a host of new dining retailers.

Purdue University has joined the list of early adopting campuses to deploy autonomous delivery robots from Starship Technologies. The unmanned delivery robots are equipped with GPS and geofencing technology and can navigate college campuses to deliver food and beverage orders to students.

As with the industry-level discussions over the course of this year, the theme is mobile for Allegion as well. In this video feature, hear from Jeff Koziol, business development manager, campus software partner at Allegion, as he discusses the trends in the campus card transaction market. Specifically, Koziol talks the details of mobile access control, the technologies that underpin them, as well as discusses how Allegion as a physical access solutions provider, fits into that landscape.

Ohio State University will no longer charge its students a fee when using campus laundry facilities. The move to a free model is set to take effect for all on-campus students starting with this fall semester, and was inspired in part by policies in place at other institutions.

After a long partnership with mobile ordering provider, Tapingo, Texas State University is set to continue providing mobile ordering to its students through Grubhub. The new partnership with Grubhub, who purchased Tapingo in 2018, is expected to offer many of the same features as before along with improved delivery benefits.

Minnesota’s St. Thomas University has installed touchless biometric hand scanners that students will now use to gain entry to campus dining halls instead of their ID cards. The initiative will leverage IDEMIA’s MorphoWave biometric readers, and will see all members of the campus community with meal plans be enrolled in the system.

There’s been a lot of buzz about mobile credentials and Apple student ID this week. A cascade of press releases from across the industry, including from Apple, CBORD, Transact, Allegion and HID is signifying that mobile credentials are primed for a promising year ahead. Headlining the announcements is CBORD’s official support of contactless student IDs in Apple Wallet, along with a roster of CBORD campus clients that are set to begin issuing mobile credentials this fall.