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  • 1.  Mobile Payment Vendors

    Posted 08-26-2025 08:17 AM

    We have numerous advancement events where donations or payments are taken using Square on iPads, etc...  Sometimes the payments are at golf outings, some payments require sales tax collected, others are straight donations, etc...

     

    Our Finance department questions whether there are better solutions out there being used by higher education institutions for taking these payments.  They are looking at a campus-wide solution (for all departments).  Do any other higher education people here know of industry best practice campus-wide solutions that would fit the needs of all departments (including advancement)?   What does your institution use and what has been the experience for those in advancement?

     

    Thanks in advance for any suggestions and/or ideas around this topic.

     

    Lisa

     

    Lisa S. Geiersbach

    Director of Advancement Services

     

    Northwood University

     



  • 2.  RE: Mobile Payment Vendors

    Posted 08-26-2025 08:52 AM

    We've tried to make this work at Emory for well over a decade, mostly with FirstData devices given our enterprise treasury set up. The biggest problem you're going to run into is that none of the devices are geared towards capturing anything more than just a basic transaction. It is almost impossible to capture the donor information. If you think about where you typically see a Square device (farmers' market, merch table, restaurant), those are just basic transactional businesses with no need for capturing deeper customer information, so the devices only do the bare minimum. There's a market out there (in here?) dying for a better solution. 

    -jsg



    ------------------------------
    Josh Greenbaum
    Emory University
    jgree2@emory.edu
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: Mobile Payment Vendors

    Posted 08-31-2025 09:45 AM
    Hi Lisa,

    At my previous institution we were also collecting revenue at events using iPads and card capturing devices that were provided by our credit card merchant. We were asked to discontinue this practice due to the Institution's PCI compliance policies.

    It will be important to work with your institution's Finance office especially if they are responsible for your institution's PCI compliance to ensure your solution meets your institution's PCI compliance policies. Typically, these enterprise devices can be provided by your merchant as well to keep consistent across the Institution, but to Josh's point these Point-of-Sale (POS) devices typically capture little information without an integration.

    At my previous institution we were using Heartland provided devices through the Finance Office.

    Thanks,
    Marc






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