Making the CashlessCampus a Reality
For colleges and universities, the journey to cashless payment systems has taken place over many years. For many
campuses, this time frame was accelerated by the pandemic and its resulting shift to remote operations andlearning. Bank of America convened a panel discussion with higher education decision-makers who shared theirexperiences achieving approval for and managing the transition. The panel was attended by over 160 individuals
from nearly 90 colleges and universities. The following is a summary of the conversation.

Digital payments are improving the student experience, and stakeholders are buying in
As the national head for our higher education treasury practiceat Bank of America, Lynn Wiatrowski hosted this forum, dedicatedto thought leadership and sharing ideas on emerging topics forthe industry.
Andrew Ilnicki describes his role as “weird and wonderful.” As director ofstrategic technology and a faculty member at Virginia Commonwealth
University, Ilnicki teaches at some of its innovation centers of excellence.
While working at the sprawling urban campus in Richmond, VA,
he’s witnessed the rapid rise in high-frequency transactions andpeer-to-peer payments.
Today, VCU is going more digital, cashless, perhaps even cardless.
According to Ilnicki, it’s driven by a larger vision of how they can enable amore connected campus. “In working with our students and taking abottom-up approach, we’ve been able to really advise the greater
university and campus community ecosystem on where ourstudents are and where we can meet them,” he said.

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A successful transition is very much about trying to become a more
efficient campus — for students, staff and visitors. When they
visit university bursar and registrar offices, students have typicallyused cash for a wide range of payments, which ties up lines and creates
longer service times. So from a student perspective, digital payments
are more efficient. And from a staff perspective, the move toward
digital payments allows people who were traditionally cashiers tospend more time on value-driven activities like problem solving withthe students and helping visitors find their way around campus.
The same thing is true when staff members from various departments
deliver cash for deposit at vault locations. They end up sitting in lines
and holding up student services. Pace quickly experienced a variety ofefficiencies — including the elimination of the expensive armored carservice. The transition began with check scanning, then moved to coinand currency.

moderators
Lynn Wiatrowski
National Head
Higher Education, Treasury
Bank of America

Charles Colliton
Treasury Advisor Executive
Bank of America

participantsRich Steele
Interim AVC for Facilities Management
University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Bruce Guiot
Associate Treasurer
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio

Tom BradyTreasurer
Pace University
New York, New YorkAndrew Ilnicki
Director of Strategic Technology
and faculty member, School of Arts
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, Virginiamaking the cashless campus a reality

Clearly present the benefits of yourplanned changes to find the support
you need
For Rich Steele, interim AVC for facilities management, University ofNorth Carolina, Charlotte, the transition into cashless was through“cashier-less” operations in the service sector, particularly in dining
operations. Digital payments meant students didn’t have to waste
their time paying cash for their food. They could also order inadvance. This was a major innovation that enhanced the ability toaddress capacity issues. Prior to the transition to digital payments,
production systems really struggled to keep up with the volume ofdining traffic during class change or the short breaks students havefor lunch. According to Steele, “Digital payments helped us provide
the services that students needed in the short window of timethat they had, and it helped eliminate the lines.”
Going without cashiers didn’t mean that all of those positions
were eliminated. In fact, it allowed cashiers to be less transactionaland more relational. UNC Charlotte stationed them near the front
counter to greet customers and instruct them on how to use thetechnology by downloading the mobile ordering app and guidingthem to the kiosk locations.
With this approach, if one cashier position was eliminated, it
essentially meant that five other employees who were converted
to the greeter role could receive a 20% wage increase. This modelof being able to make things more efficient, redirecting money andbeing more focused on student success in a service arena also provided
higher wages for some of the lowest-wage earners at UNC Charlotte.

USE OF CASH

EFFICIENCY

Bruce Guiot, associate treasurer at Miami University in Oxford,
Ohio, commented about early efforts to introduce efficiencies:“We started using the term ‘cashless campus’ more than adecade ago, and it was really an aspirational kind of a term
for us, meaning even if we could just take some of the paper
out of circulation, we would make progress.” Over a period oftime, paper money and coins were taken out of circulation aroundthe campus. Without the need to count, handle and transport cash tothe bank, they had a much more efficient workflow.
For many institutions of higher learning, the journey to cashless
actually started pre-pandemic. But when the pandemic hit, thatjourney was greatly accelerated. At UNC Charlotte, the focus
was suddenly on more contactless services to avoid having
face-to-face interaction with others. According to Rich Steele:“We thought that the pandemic shouldn’t change us, but
the pandemic should teach us. And it really did teach usthat we have a rare opportunity to implement radical
change and to change behaviors.”

Test your assumptions underreal-world conditions
Bruce Guiot observed that, at Miami University, the long road to
cashless began back in 2011. At that time, the bursar’s office
operated essentially as a bank on campus. Employees could go andpresent a check there and walk away with cash. University travelers
could go there to get a cash advance for their travel expenses. Andof course, they accepted student payments, many of which werewalk-up. This was all a very labor-intensive, high-risk cash-handlingendeavor. So the staff started trying to find ways to improve
efficiency. The volume was just getting to be too large, and they
didn’t have the capacity or the resources to meet the demand.
They began shifting the focus toward electronic tuition payment
instead of having students walk up and pay, whether it was cash
or check. They also started to issue many more university credit
cards for travelers, and converted all of their vending machines toaccept card payments only, including credit and prepaid. Another2 | bank of america article

big piece of the cash-driven puzzle was parking, for which theyswitched to kiosks that accepted credit card payments instead.
Guiot remembers, “One constant was that the treasury office
was going out to our partners around campus and trying tohelp them identify ways to be more efficient, to reduce fees,to just reduce costs.”
Some schools use a program that allows for a monetary balance tobe loaded onto a closed-loop campus card that often also functions
as a student ID card. The card can be used at the laundry, for parking,at stores, at copy machines, etc., and also provides building access.
For many student organizations, like athletic teams, a prepaid card ordigital payment program can be used for hosting student activities
and for student emergency needs. The efficiency and security ofthese programs are key benefits.

Prepare for unanticipated events
that could derail your plan
As treasurer at Pace University in New York City, Tom Brady
learned firsthand that a good communication plan lets students
and faculty know what to expect, and exactly when. “The key
thing was to convey the benefits that would happen,” said
Brady. “It’s just a more efficient campus, with better service forstudents, and it frees up staff to better serve those students.”
Brady went on to explain how certain events can provoke action:“At one of our smaller campuses, we had a theft, which
prompted that one campus to go cashless immediately.” But
for Pace’s two primary campuses, the catalyst was the pandemic.
When the pandemic hit, Pace’s treasury department quickly
recognized that expense cuts were inevitable, so they made thedecision to go cashless, university-wide, in the spring of 2020.
The already-successful implementation on the campus that hadexperienced the theft was a key factor in gaining rapid and wide
approval for this change.

making the cashless campus a reality

Student attitudes and preferences are major factors driving themove to cashless. Virginia Commonwealth University has a very
urban campus of 30,000 stakeholders, plus many interested
third parties and partners. Andrew Ilnicki noted that the school
encourages its students to speak up about any pain points thatexist, so they can work on developing solutions for the future. He
also provided some telling statistics:• Out of a hundred students that were surveyed, only 1 out of
100 used cash and didn’t use any peer-to-peer payment apps
or digital wallets of any kind.
• 75% of students use peer-to-peer payment or digital wallets.
• 85% of students use multiple forms of payment.

Seek out the best ideas

Conclusion

According to Ilnicki, students were directly involved in a lotof the outcomes at VCU. Like any university, VCU has student
committees, student government and a student technology
committee specifically engaged to deal with issues like digital
payments, and they provide feedback that flows back up
through university channels. Ilnicki explained that the Collegeof Engineering came forward with some ideas to help envisiona more digitally connected campus. “We’ve even launched aninternship program recently, and it’s been going extremely
well,” he said. “It’s wonderful to watch this beautiful thing
unfold organically.”

In a very real way, a college campus is like a micro society — amicro economy — and campus card and digital payment systems
have become the backbone for cashless operations. Today,colleges are witnessing the transition from physical plastic todigital cards and payment systems. At the same time, thanks
to smartphones and smartwatches, they are experiencing thetransition from physical credentials to mobile credentials. And allof this is being tested and proven with students. Taking the timeto have students and staff weigh in on and then embrace thechanges taking place is the surest route to success.

VCU is a very active campus community where the vast majority ofstudents are not using cash. Although 50% of students carry cards,
they don’t use them, because they prefer to use other methodsof payment. They typically don’t want to carry a wallet. They only
want to carry their phone, which acts as a mobile wallet.

Contact us to learn more
Contact your Bank of America representative to discuss these topics
or ways we can help your institution.

Being able to operate cashless is huge — from tuition to foodto professional services to vending to paying fees, students aredriving the digital movement. And it’s everywhere, from email tosocial media to VCU’s various social avenues across the campus.
Students want to go there — and quickly.
It’s also very important to communicate the movement away fromcash as an option to campus visitors, especially those who rarely
visit campus except for special events or other one-time activities.
This can be handled by posting notices online or at event locations
about limitations on handling cash. That way, their campus
experience will not be negatively impacted by the change.

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