SA Cash Provides Relief

The dust kicked up by the launch of your 2000-2001 school year has probably settled down by now and card program administrators around the country can dedicate all of their time and resources to executing new programs being demanded by their campus and students.  Right?  Not quite.  Unfortunately, on most campuses the requests come in droves, but the resources are few and almost entirely dedicated to managing the programs in place rather than those to be created.

One program that is in particularly high demand by students and being mandated by several institutions is the off-campus program.  This leaves many universities facing the challenge of how to create and support an off-campus program to complement existing One Card operations.

Student Advantage has provided some relief now to 7 card offices around the country with its SA Cash solution.  SA Cash is a One Card feature that allows students to use their university-issued stored value account at off-campus businesses.  The Company has been in the business of off-campus stored value for six years but only began promoting the service to schools in the past two years.  Since that time, four CampusWide, two Diebold, and one Special Teams Campus have come on board.

“The key to a successful off-campus launch lies in effective management of multiple processes, including merchant recruitment and maintenance, marketing and promotion, and online development,” said Mitch Jacobs, VP of Product Management and Development, who founded the first program at Dartmouth College.  “There’s a lot to juggle in launching these programs and making them fun and valuable for the students in the process..”

The SA Cash program meets these demands by offering universities a way to partner with off-campus and online merchants without enduring the cost and administrative burdens of promoting, installing and maintaining such a system.  The Company leverages its established relationships with local merchants as well as proprietary transaction terminals, interface to on-campus financial systems to process transactions, and merchant reporting and reconciliation systems to support endorsing schools off-campus networks.

Student Advantage’s goal is to make the University’s One Card the student’s sole form of payment used on- and off-campus.  The Company leverages its expertise to drive student usage of the university’s One Card and extend its value in a way that reflects the mission and philosophy of the school.

For more information on the SA Cash program contact Jennifer Goldberg, Senior Manager, SA Cash at 617.880.1715 or jgoldberg@studentadvantage.com