Author: SchoolPay Marketing

CARY, N.C. and MADISON, Wis., Sept. 6, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Dude Solutions, the leading provider of operations management services to education, and SchoolPay, the most advanced enterprise payment solution in the K12 market, today announced an agreement for SchoolPay to power payments in various Dude Solutions systems.

“Payment at the time of reservation has been a goal for the Dude Solutions services for some time.  We are excited to offer this added convenience to our customers.  This is a feature greatly desired by our facility rental and event customers and represents our commitment to provide the solutions that meet our customer’s varying needs with flexible configurations,” said Lee Prevost, CSO Dude Solutions. 

David Dunaway, President and CEO of SchoolPay added, “Dude Solutions is the ideal partner to leverage SchoolPay’s new self-service boarding portal.  With their a large customer base, being able to board a high number of school districts with speed, efficiency, and minimal client effort is important. We are pleased that Dude Solutions saw SchoolPay’s readiness to meet those requirements.”

Dude Solutions and My Payment Network expect the new functionality to be live for school districts and other customers in Fall 2018.

About Dude Solutions
Dude Solutions is a leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider of operations management solutions to education, government, healthcare, senior living, manufacturing and membership-based organizations. For nearly two decades, Dude Solutions has inspired clients to create better work and better lives. We combine innovative, user-friendly technology with the world’s smartest operations engine, empowering operations leaders to transform the most important places in our lives. Today, more than 11,000 organizations use our award-winning software to manage maintenance, assets, energy, safety, IT, events and more.

CONTACT:  Kristina Walsh, [email protected], 919.459.3138

About SchoolPay
SchoolPay (www.schoolpay.com), a product from My Payment Network, is the first enterprise-level payment software built specifically for K12. SchoolPay centralizes every in-person, online and mobile payment in a school, district or school group and synchronizes payment data with other district applications, such as student information systems, general ledger, and food service software that rely on payment data. My Payment Network is based in Madison, WI. More information about My Payment Network can be found at www.mypaynet.com.

CONTACT: Ann Dunaway, [email protected], 888.88.MYPAY

SOURCE Dude Solutions, Inc. and SchoolPay

SACRAMENTO, C.A., April 5, 2018 —ScholarChip, the largest provider of automated school safety and operations services, and SchoolPay, the most advanced enterprise payment solution in the K12 market, today announced a co-marketing and enhanced integration agreement at CASBO (the 2018 Annual Conference & California School Business Expo), Sacramento Convention Center, April 4-7, 2018. ScholarChip’s POS platform will seamlessly integrate with SchoolPay’s Payment Gateway to load/re-load pre-paid cafeteria balances, update account transactions to SchoolPay’s Payment Portal, and set balance alerts for low balances and other issues.

“SchoolPay’s robust, comprehensive, and user-friendly payment services, integrated with our Cafeteria Point-of-Sale (POS) system, provides students, parents, and school personnel with a frictionless payment and point-of-sale solution,” said Craig Lockwood, president and CFO, ScholarChip. “And co-marketing opportunities means we can support more schools in their quest for easy and seamless POS financial operations.”

David Dunaway, president and CEO of SchoolPay, added, “Districts increasingly want all of their payments in one system, but they also rely on services like ScholarChip’s to unify student activities that include automated attendance, behavioral events, visitor management, and others. With this integration, parents will have one entry point into two connected systems for fast, reliable access to their child’s school account.” 

ScholarChip and SchoolPay have developed an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that gives users an SSO (Single Sign On) between systems without the need for multiple registrations; the new SSO saves time with quicker access to ScholarChip’s and SchoolPay’s POS services. The companies expect these services to be available by the end of this month.

In addition to integrating their systems and enhancing the user experience through new features, the companies will co-market their complementary solutions to the K12 market as well. 

About ScholarChip

ScholarChip is the largest provider of smart ID cards used for attendance, payment processing, visitor management, secure door access, and behavior management services in K12. It was first to market in centralizing and integrating School Safety and Operations System with a true one card solution, which operates seamlessly with popular Student Information Systems and NFC mobile devices. ScholarChip’s Higher Education services include Tuition Payment Plans, Loan Servicing, Student Retention Services, and a compliant Payment Gateway. For more information visit http://www.scholarchip.com.ScholarChip

About SchoolPay

SchoolPay (www.schoolpay.com), a product from My Payment Network, is the first enterprise-level payment software built specifically for K12. SchoolPay centralizes every in-person, online and mobile payment in a school, district or school group and synchronizes payment data with disparate applications, such as student information systems, general ledger, and food service software that rely on payment data. My Payment Network is based in Madison, WI. More information about My Payment Network can be found at www.mypaynet.com.

CONTACT: [email protected] | 888.88.MYPAY

Performance Matters and SchoolPay Partner to Simplify and Streamline Payments for Professional Development in K-12 School Districts

The integration between SchoolPay and the Performance Matters Professional Development platform will provide K-12 districts with a centralized, streamlined solution for managing and processing payments for professional developmentSeptember 05, 2017 07:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

SANDY, Utah–(BUSINESS WIRE)–While professional development (PD) is a requirement for all teachers, many K-12 school districts lack a cohesive way to handle payments for course registration, materials, and related expenses. Performance Matters has partnered with SchoolPay to provide a centralized, streamlined solution for managing and processing payments for PD.

@PerfMatters #ProfessionalDevelopment platform now allows track & manage of payments for #teacher PDTweet this

Through this partnership, Performance Matters will integrate SchoolPay’s enterprise K-12 payment solution within the Performance Matters Professional Development platform. The seamless workflows between SchoolPay and Performance Matters will simplify the payment process for educators by allowing them to securely submit online payments for course fees and materials from the same PD platform they already use to manage all of their professional learning.

For districts, the integration will provide an easy way to track and manage payments for PD system-wide, which will save time and eliminate paperwork. It will also give districts an efficient way to offer PD to and collect payments from educators in neighboring districts.

“Our partnership with SchoolPay will help districts increase transparency and streamline operations by putting all payments for professional learning on a common payment platform within our Professional Development solution,” said Jeanette Haren, chief product officer and co-founder of Performance Matters. “It will also enhance the PD experience for educators by making the payment process easy to navigate, thanks to SchoolPay’s user friendly interface.”

“Performance Matters is our first partner in the educator development arena, and we’re excited to work with them to provide districts with a robust payment solution that will maximize efficiency in their professional development programs and their day-to-day operations,” said David Dunaway, CEO and president of SchoolPay.

About SchoolPay

SchoolPay is a service of My Payment Network, a privately-held company based in Madison, Wisc. SchoolPay makes electronic payment solutions specifically built to serve the complex payment needs of public and private K-12 schools and districts.

About Performance Matters

By combining powerful student and educator growth solutions with real-time analytics, Performance Matters helps K-12 school districts drive continuous improvement of instruction and learning. The Performance Matters Platform includes tools for student assessment development and delivery, as well as educator professional development, evaluation, observation, and calibration. The Performance Matters Platform is used by more than 1 million educators and 11 million students in school districts across the country. For information, visit www.performancematters.com.

Contacts

Performance Matters
Leslie Eicher, 314-965-1776
[email protected]

Collecting Your Back-to-School Payments

Back-to-school season is near, and one of the top issues to consider is how to reduce wait time and payment lines. If you use Skyward’s Fee Management area, online payments are a great way to eliminate payment lines. Several Ecommerce providers offer custom integrations capable of supporting all the fees you manage with Skyward’s Fee Management area.

SchoolPay, an online payment service integrated with Skyward, offers a unique feature that sets us apart from other Ecommerce providers. SchoolPay’s software features a proprietary virtual terminal that allows you to collect in-person cash, paper check, and credit card payments and automatically posts those payments back into Skyward’s Fee Management area as well. Back-to-school day can generate thousands of payments that typically result in hundreds of manual entry hours. Imagine the time your staff will save, and the errors that will be avoided, by having every payment automatically post back into Skyward!

How Does It Work?

SchoolPay’s virtual terminal comes at no additional charge to their base Ecommerce software. If you’d like to take in-person credit cards, there are two hardware options that do carry a cost.

• ID Tech Unimag II ($50) can be used with iPads.
• MSR 100 ($40) can be used with any device with a USB port.  

Transaction Rates 

• Credit card transaction costs are the same as their Ecommerce transaction rates: 2.99% + 30 cents for Visa, MasterCard, and Discover.  
• Cash and paper check transaction costs are 15 cents apiece.  

The terminal allows you to select any student and see all their fees. All forms of payment are accepted: cash, paper check, electronic check, or credit card. Upon payment confirmation, the fees are automatically posted back into Skyward’s Fee Management area, eliminating the need for any manual entries. All payments are centrally reported and captured in a single monthly statement.

SchoolPay’s solutions are Payment as a Service.

If your district is looking for an in-person payment solution that syncs with Skyward Fee Management area, or you’re ready to consolidate all payments (online and in-person) into a unified payment solution across your entire enterprise, contact SchoolPay to schedule a demonstration at [email protected]

Original Post: https://www.skyward.com/discover/blog/skyward-blogs/skyward-executive-blog/may-2017/demystifying-pci-dss

Guest Post: Demystifying PCI DSS

Today’s schools are suddenly responsible for understanding PCI DSS and often have annual audit requirements. Sounds scary, right?  While most public schools would not consider themselves payments experts, they manage enough payments to benefit greatly from acquiring some expertise.

In 2008, SchoolPay (under our corporate name My Payment Network), ASBO International (Association of School Business Officials), and NBOA (National Business Officers Association) conducted a K12 Payments Study. The results were enlightening. The average parent makes 28 payments per child per year directly to their school. Managing 28 payments per child per year across many departments and vendors casts a wide audit scope, increases errors and omissions, and escalates operation costs.

Study published in School Business Affairs, 2008

Object Controls 

At the highest level, PCI DSS is concerned with six object controls. “Object controls” logically group related things. PCI DSS comes down to six areas of focus:

1. Build and maintain a secure network
2. Protect cardholder data
3. Maintain a vulnerability management program
4. Implement strong access control measures
5. Regularly monitor and test networks
6. Maintain an information security policy

Sounds easy enough, right? Well, each object control has further requirements, and if you peel back every layer you will quickly find that these six controls feed into hundreds of requirements. Any vendor that takes payments on your district’s behalf should be independently audited to prove they adhere to the hundreds of requirements. Please don’t confuse “compliance with PCI DSS” with “independently audited.” If you outsource all your payments, you still have to be compliant. Your service provider needs to be independently audited. 

Five Points that “Make Sense”

We’ve boiled down the principles. These points are by no means intended to be your  guideline for maintaining PCI DSS compliance. They merely simplify the topic for a broad introduction to what can be a very big subject.

Point #1:  PCI DSS is about more than Ecommerce.

Many people think PCI DSS is only about Ecommerce. It’s about cardholder data. If you allow in-person credit card payments, PCI DSS impacts those payments as well. 

Best practice: Every human and system location in the district that could come in contact with or leave a record of a 16-digit card number is a threat. Document these and establish a policy for that data interaction.

Point #2:  PCI DSS is not the job of one person or one department.

PCI DSS is equivalent to trusting someone with a secret. How many people does your district trust with this secret?

Best practice: Establish policies and procedures that define the behavior of everyone (staff) and everything (hardware/software) in the district that touch cardholder data.

District Payment Biosphere

Point #3:  You must interact with cardholder data to take payments.

Best practice: Limit your scope.  

• Reduce the number of people authorized to manage credit card payments.
• Institute policy for taking card numbers over the phone or in person.
• Reduce the level of data staff can access (e.g. Costco has a policy that cashiers are not allowed to even key in cardholder account numbers if the magnetic strip fails).
• Push credit card payments to a secure solution where only the payer interacts with their card number. 

Point #4: PCI DSS is really common sense.

Maybe your common sense is on track, but do you really want to leave something this important up to every staff member’s common sense? Districts prepared to head off security breaches take all human “sense” out of the equation.

Some samples of questionable “common sense” we regularly see in schools:

• Donation cards that collect 16-digit credit card number, expiration date and CVV that end up on desks visible to all.
• A foundation or aftercare worker that keeps a list of cardholder numbers, etc. for payments they re-key every month. We saw one case where the staff member had it taped to the top of their desk so it was “handy.”
• Employees empowered to take credit card numbers over the phone who then write down full account details and leave those details behind on open desks.

Best Practices:

• Centralize payment policies across the district – don’t leave it up to every department. 
• Put as many payments as you can onto a common, secure payment platform.
• Know the payment credentials for all software vendors offering payment solutions.
  • Ecommerce and payments are not an “add on” feature. It’s a business in and of itself.
  • Make sure any software that collects card numbers is a Level One Independently Audited Provider.

Point #5:  You take more payments than you think.

The number and kind of credit card transactions you manage determine your PCI DSS requirements. Whether you need an independent audit or an “acknowledgement of compliance” depends on your district security policies and the volume of transactions for which your district owns the collection of cardholder data.

Even if your school outsources payments to one or more vendors, you still have annual responsibilities to PCI DSS.  All school business officers should establish an awareness of the guiding principles for protecting cardholder data.

The bottom line with PCI DSS is that while it is a huge business practice, it’s also an important way to operate.  All schools take in millions of dollars in payments annually. PCI DSS is not only good cardholder best practice; it’s also good payment-of-any-kind (cash, paper check) business practice.

For more information about PCI DSS 3.2 (the current version of PCI DSS requirements) go to https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org.