Students returning this fall are in for some technological changes across campus that will require KSU students to exchange their old student IDs for new ones in order to continue using their K-Cash and Dining Dollars accounts.
According to Elaine Ferguson, the assistant director of Card Services, none of these technological enhancements could be implemented without switching to a SmartCard.
The new card, which can also be used as a Fifth Third Bank card, displays the interlocking KSU logo with wings to the left of the student picture, as well as the KSU ID and NET ID on the front. The card has a gold and black stripe on the back “There are two strips,” said Joseph DiBattista Jr., KSU’s director of Card Services. “There’s a gold strip [for] on- campus transactions [like] meal plans, dining dollars, copy-print type stuff, and the black stripe on the back is that bank relationship mag stripe that you’ll use for PIN-based debit transactions.”
“What prompted the move was the university partnering with Fifth Third Bank and part of that partnership was a co- branding of the ID,” DiBattista said. “We had the opportunity to move to smarter technology so in addition to co-branding, we moved to that smarter, more secure SmartCard technology.” DiBattista said students should get their new cards as soon as possible because the new readers have already been placed across campus.
Some of the features of the new cards are presented on the school’s website. An email was recently sent to KSU students, explaining the new ID card and encouraging them to change out their old cards by the end of September.
The new card’s functions include “Tap and Go,” the ability to tap your card at certain locations instead of having to swipe their cards and the option to use the ID for debit transactions if the student desires to open an account with Fifth Third Bank.
The new cards use Mifare technology, which is more difficult to hack than the older RFID cards, according to the Card Services website.
DiBattista said there was a lot of work involved in the implementation of the new technology, which involved many KSU departments.
“We had to rearrange our whole infrastructure,” he said. “Enterprise Systems and Services was involved, Information Technology Services was involved, Procurement was involved, Legal was involved, everybody on the whole campus was involved. It’s a huge undertaking.”
DiBattista is scheduled to give a presentation to the Student Government Association Aug. 22 regarding the new cards and will provide more details.
“We are re-carding the whole campus over at the Convocation Center,” DiBattista said. “We have about 23, 000 IDs waiting for students to come and visit us and exchange their old IDs for a new ID.”
DiBattista said students will have until Sept. 30 to get their new cards. After that, the old cards will no longer work.
