easycash Loyalty Solutions presents: MensaCARD Card Payment for Canteen Meals

EuroCIS, Duesseldorf, Germany, March 2010. easycash Loyalty Solutions GmbH has developed a unique card payment solution for canteen meal environments. MensaCARD is a simple and fast payment option for school and university canteens as well as corporate staff canteens. These rechargeable prepaid cards can be used in specified environments for contact-free payment (closed loop card). As an initial trial, the card has been in use since January 2010 at the Friedrichsort High School in Kiel, Germany.
MensaCARD: Progress in school life
Since January 2010, MensaCARD will come into use at the Integrated Friedrichsort High School in Kiel (IGF) (www.igf.de[1]). It has replaced the meal vouchers, which students previously used as payment for their school lunches. The card has had a very positive effect, and not only from canteen personnel: “Students and parents are very pleased about the MensaCARD”, Managing Director of easycash Loyalty Solutions, Thies Rixen, reports. “We had 300 card applications already before the start of the project. The benefits of the card are numerous: students no longer need to carry cash, and the card is valid only in the school canteen - eliminating the so-called ‘rip-off’, the extortionist practices, which some adolescents use to steal money from other students. And parents can rest assured that lunch money is not used for other purchases, like sweets or cigarettes. And what’s more: our intelligent systems even make canteen bookkeeping a breeze”.
Intelligent Payment System
MensaCARD is based on an intelligent concept that makes payment quick and easy: cards are prepaid by electronic fund transfer (EFT) or direct debit from the parents’ account directly to the credit account of the canteen operator PariSERVE. Payments are processed via the easycash Loyalty Solutions systems. The Hamburg-based service provider then withdraws the relevant amounts from the credit account of the caterer on a daily basis by way of the account management system OPAL, and also uses OPAL to credit the relevant student accounts. The OPAL system also allows the processing of state subsidies where applicable, and offers various reporting options.

For students, buying their lunch has become simpler than ever before with MensaCARD: they approach an order terminal, where a touchscreen selection of three available menus is offered. At the terminal, students can also check their card balance. After they have made their selection, students hold the contact-free MensaCARD to the NFC card reader, which is integrated into the order terminal. When picking up their lunch order, students and teachers are once again identified via NFC card reader. Canteen personnel are presented with two output terminals, on which they can see which menu was ordered, and can fill the order accordingly. Personnel will also be able to see at a glance whether the order was paid for, and whether the order has already been given out to avoid confusion.
The project’s catering partner, PariSERVE, also benefits from MensaCARD: in addition to making menu planning much simpler, scheduling and cost structure generation has become a lot easier. From a bookkeeping point of view, the card not only optimises and simplifies reporting, but the entire reporting process is speeded up.
MensaCARD: A Concept for the Future
With the first implementation of Mensacard, easycash Loyalty Solutions, IGF and their caterering partner PariSERVE have given us a glimpse of what canteen meals will look like in the future. The same system can be applied to health or care institutions, universities, and corporate staff canteens. First enquiries from the industry sector have already been received.
[1] http://www.igf.de