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Apple iPhone 6: The Next Student Campus Card?

  • 11/13/14

SCOTTSDALE, AZ — Apple’s iPhone 6 could dramatically change the way colleges and universities process student campus card transactions, according to vendor-independent campus card business consultant Robert C. Huber, CMC, CPCM. For the past 50 years, colleges, universities, hospitals and corporate campuses have been issuing plastic cards and badges to their students and employees using a variety of technologies. New hardware and software in devices like the iPhone 6 are paving the way for the transition to digital — using smartphones as both a secure form of ID and payment processing.

Huber, who developed the “All-Campus Card” in 1985, combined many traditional campus applications (Dining Services, Library, Vending, Laundry, Copiers, Parking, Door Access) and consolidated them, along with a FLEXible spending account, all using a single ID card.

The non-patented “The All-Campus Card” concept revolutionized how academic, healthcare and corporate campuses deliver services and facilitate door access privileges worldwide.

Now, Huber envisions these same organizations, along with boarding schools and high schools, accepting user-provided mobile credentials, such as smartphones, in lieu of institution-issued physical ID cards.

“Since most students already have personal smartphones and managing their online accounts is something they already do everyday, providing their own 'virtual' Campus Card will most likely be preferred and even perceived as improved Customer Service,” suggests Huber.

“Although it took a few years for many of us to switch from paper tickets to e-tickets, the acceptance of smartphones by the TSA as valid passenger identification has been relatively smooth,” adds Huber. “In a similar manner, I expect to see a wave of institutions shifting their policies, operations and technologies to self-provided and self-managed credentials by the end of the decade," Huber predicts in his forthcoming 2015 Campus Card Industry Forecast.

The new Apple iPhone 6 includes several features which are similar to many state-of-the-art campus cards:

  • Apple Pay will allow users to process multiple forms of payments using their personal mobile credentials.
  • Encryption of payment card data and non-transmission of credit card numbers to merchants.
  • An internal Near-Field Communication (NFC) chip will wirelessly process transactions (similar to Bluetooth Smart) as a more secure payment technology than magnetic-stripe cards.

Apple’s introduction of this new technology via the iPhone 6 is a game-changer... one that Huber is now adding to his next Campus Card Industry Forecast. To view photos, articles, time lines, legacy card readers, videos and press releases displayed in the "Campus Card History Museum," visit www.AllCampusCard.com.

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