With the swipe of a student ID card, Grand Rapids Community College is offering free laptop rentals to students. The service is being offered via vending machine, giving students an alternative to accessing the technology needed to support their academic work.

In a continually expanding campus market, students, faculty and staff expect payment acceptance and a consistent customer experience across all points of interaction. With today’s omni-channel technologies, universities and their supporting communities can deliver this experience while monetizing their payment ecosystems for greater revenues.

Students at UC San Diego will soon be able to use their campus cards and TritonCash to pay for a number of essential health items from a campus “Wellness Vending Machine.” UCSD’s University Centers Advisory Board (UCAB) has also approved the new vending machine for sale of generic Plan B pills.

Payment and secure mobile communications provider Apriva, has partnered with vending solutions provider Parlevel Systems to complete the integration of the Parlevel Micro Market solution to the Apriva payment gateway platform. The integration is set to provide secure cashless payments to Apriva resellers and self-service operators, while expanding cashless payment options to end users including college campuses with the inclusion of campus card support.

Vending is a core component of virtually every campus card program and for all the talk of how student IDs have evolved over time, vending has come a long way, too. The shift to cashless vending in particular has brought a new wave of convenience and utility to users, and removing the need for cash or coin has been a boon to the industry.

Three men at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford have been arrested on allegations they conspired to make numerous vending machine purchases with someone else’s student ID card. The incident was reported to police after a student noticed 51 vending transactions had occurred while the card was lost.

USA Technologies, a payment technology service provider of self-service transactions has expanded an agreement with Burch Food Service that will enable campus card acceptance at a local university for closed-loop campus ID purchases on a Blackboard system.

Payment solution provider, Apriva, completed EMV certification for a new unattended card reader that can accept both campus card payments as well as EMV chip-enabled bankcards. The BV1000 card reader, developed by Globalcom Engineering, connects through the Apriva Gateway to enable secure payment options in self-service retail environments such as parking garages and car washes.

Debit and credit cards, as well their mobile equivalents, are giving campus cards a run for their money at vending machines on many campuses across the country. Although providers of traditional closed-loop campus card systems may be losing their once exclusive grip on cashless vending sales, most say the migration to open-loop payments is contributing to a rising tide in unattended sales.

Pepsi vending machines on campus at the University of Wyoming have expanded their payment options to accept the student ID and declining balance funds. The additional payment method is made possible by a partnership between the university’s campus card vendor, Blackboard and Pepsi Cola.