The Hinson Campus Center will accept Visa and Mastercard by the end of this week. “There are just a few more things to be set up so that the process will run smoothly, but we are very close,” said Patrick Gannon said, director of the Hinson Campus Center.
Since the Campus Center re-opened last September, cash has been the only form of money accepted. However, there was one U.S. Bank ATM machine allowing students to withdraw cash. The machine required a $2 transaction fee and is unreliable according to a technician working unit.
“If it doesn’t go out of order only once, it happens two or three times within just a few hours, taking upwards of twenty minutes to fix every time,” he said. Thus alternative ways to pay for meals are attractive to students.
Since card services charge the school for every transaction, accepting credit cards could increase prices. This could make more of a long term impact than an ATM transaction fee.
“The cafeteria is essentially a break-even project,” said Jeanine Hawk, vice president of finance and college services. “It’s not meant to make a profit in the end.” During the last fiscal year the Campus Center was open, 2005-6, the cafeteria made only $9,000 off a total 1 million dollars in food sales.
If the profit margin were to be lowered further due to the cost of card services, the school would need to sacrifice something in regards to the affordability or the quality of food. “It is for this reason,” said Jeanine Hawk “that in the 1990s fast food companies such as McDonalds and Burger King remained cash-only for so long.”
Ganon, said however, that food prices would not rise. The function of accepting card transactions in the cafeteria was not delayed because of budgetary reasons he said, but because of “third parties getting in the way.” These included “dealing with the district, working on the Point of Sales system, communicating with the contractor, dealing with laborers to run the electric cables to the location and addressing the school’s electric technology system. “You’d think it’d be an easier process to get this all set up,” he said, “but we’re finally here.”
