ScholarChip, Zebra Technologies Corporation and ID solutions reseller, ARMET Group, have together created the Affordable Smart Card ID Initiative, a new subsidy program designed to enable qualifying school districts to implement highly secure smart ID card systems for students and staff.

Access control and adjacent applications on campus have been driving smart card adoption in the past, but Allegion’s Jeremy Earles says that now there are other motives, both technological and societal, that will inspire more smart card transitions on campuses nationwide in 2016.

A new mobile ID system is being implemented for Nigerian students in an effort to improve exam validation processes and cut down on identity fraud. The West African Examinations Council is spearheading the project along with HID Global who has provided contactless smart cards to more than 2.2 million Nigerian students enrolled in the testing program.

ScholarChip is expanding its network in New York with the addition of two more school districts to the company’s K-12 smart, one card system. The contactless cards can be used for a full range of on-campus functions including campus and classroom attendance, bus monitoring and secure door access.

The London Transit Commission is launching smart card technology for bus riders, and college students are the first to put the new system to use. Students at Fanshawe College are using their student IDs as part of the new smart card system that is expected to roll out to the general public later this year.

Zebra Technologies’ Ryan Goh explains his reasons for the implementation of smart IDs in a higher ed environment. In a recent guest column, Goh provided six features of smart IDs that make them an ideal fit for a college campus and its students.

Together with NXP Semiconductors, Blackboard has surpassed 1 million NFC cards shipped since 2012. The credentials have shipped nationwide with destinations including UCLA, Quinnipiac University, Liberty University, University of Oklahoma and Central Michigan University all utilizing NFC-compatible cards.

Northern Arizona University recently completed its jump to contactless student IDs, in part as a response to some security limitations associated with the university’s old 125 kHz prox credentials, as well as in an effort to bring the campus card up to speed with the latest technology. We talked details with card provider HID and NAU’s systems administrator for campus services and activities.

Smart cards remain a largely under-utilized resource here in the US, but European universities like Spain’s Universidad de Cantabria have been leveraging smart card technology for decades. Based in Santander, Spain, Cantabria has acted as a proving ground and flagship for Santander Universities’ smart card system that has since been implemented at universities throughout Europe and the rest of the globe.

ISIC France is using HID Global’s FARGO line of printer/encoders and the company’s AsureID 7 ID Card Personalization Software Development Kit to deliver International Student Identity Cards to France’s Grandes Écoles system of universities. The partnership is issuing as many as 150,000 cards annually.