ICT - Networking and Communications
Electronic payments for a smarter world T
he world we live in is increasingly cashless. New electronic payment technologies such as the Oyster smart card in London almost seem like old technologies having been around for 9 years. With the advent of new-ways-to- pay, be it online, through mobile phones or smart cards, one thing for sure is that children today will use cash less and less to pay for things as they progress through life. Many schools for example, have already embraced cashless technologies, such as contactless smart cards and biometric ID’s, enabling students and their parents to top up online and pay for everything from school meals to school trips, uniform, printing and other school related expenses. Less cash handling for school office staff and the overhead of managing this can only be a good thing, right? Especially when they can be integrated in to school back office financial administration and reporting systems. It’s easy to understand why schools have become the driving force of electronic payments.
Security also becomes an important factor as electronic money goes main stream, with eMoney, here in the UK, being an activity regulated by the Financial
Services Authority (FSA) offering parents and schools alike a degree of comfort that their money is being responsibly managed.
Recent research carried out by sQuid, the school eMoney provider, to parents of children who use its’ ePayments network, found that 80% of parents find electronic payments ‘easy’, 90% would recommend to another parent and that 65% (2 in 3) would like to pay for more things, such as school trips using online payments. It appears that parents and children are all too happy to embrace electronic payments and a new-way- to-pay in a smarter world.
For more information about sQuid, the school ePayments specialist, contact them on:
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www.education-today.co.uk
May 2012
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