Fifth Third Bancorp is leveraging its existing relationships with colleges and universities to enter the campus card program market.
Cincinnati-based Fifth Third is providing Cedarville University in Ohio with a combination campus identification and debit card for students, faculty and staff, the institutions announced Sept. 6.
Schools now more than ever are exploring campus card programs, Jon Groch, senior vice president and director of bankcard services for Fifth Third, tells PaymentsSource. “We’re doing this as a way to enhance the relationship we already have with these schools,” he adds.
Fifth Third also provides treasury and loan-management services to schools in addition to the ATMs Fifth Third operates on campuses. “Most of the time, these campus card ideas are coming out of the treasury office of a university,” Groch says.
The “cedarville1card” enables students to access university facilities such as dorms and the library as well as withdraw cash from the two ATMs on campus and conduct PIN-based transactions through merchants on campus.
The combination card is optional and those wishing to use one must have a Fifth Third checking account.
The university, which is in Cedarville, Ohio, also can use the program to streamline the university’s payment operations and disburse funds, including financial aid, directly to a student’s checking account, Mark Biddinger, director of accounting for the university, said in a press release.
Fifth Third views the program not only as a campus access and payment card but also as a way to help schools with distributing financial aid and cafeteria food-plan options, Groch says. “What we really want to do is provide a campus card, but a solution to our higher education customers.”
Groch believes Fifth Third’s take on the program will give it an advantage over others in the space. Competitors offering campus cards combining payments and other functions include Heartland Payment Systems Inc. and Cardsmith LLC and NuVision Networks Corp. (
Fifth Third hopes it can build on its Cedarville University relationship to offer additional services to those cardholders.
“That’s a big piece of it as well,” Groch says. “This is a great way of establishing new relationships, not only with the students, but also faculty and staff.”
Fifth Third sees the program as a long-term investment because student accounts take some time to become profitable, Groch adds.
Fifth Third’s ability to build new banking relationships with Cedarville University could become a “feeding ground” of sorts for the bank, Madeline Aufseeser, an Aite Group senior analyst, tells PaymentsSource.
“Once that students matures, Fifth Third will be in a position to offer a credit card, might be able to migrate them into a traditional demand deposit account” and other services such has loans and retirement savings, Aufseeser says.
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