CBORD acquires core membership business of Student Advantage
Following on the heels of its acquisition of Diebold’s card system business earlier this year, CBORD has acquired the merchant discount membership business from Student Advantage. Included in the purchase are the existing member base, more than 20,000 pre-arranged participating merchant relationships, and the Student Advantage name. Not included is the SA Cash payment card business which will remain with Student Advantage founder Ray Sozzi.
According to CBORD EVP Bruce Lane, “we anticipate that schools with and without (other CBORD products) will take part in the program.” We have the ability (widespread campus relationships and sales presence) to project it out into the marketplace.”
In a phone interview with the CR80News editor, Mr. Lane seemed especially excited about Student Advantage’s co-branding program. For the past year and one-half, SA has offered a program to campuses where, in return for signups, the campus gets a part of the enrollment fee for the effort.
Says Mr. Lane, “schools are usually looking at cards as outflow but the co-brand is a proven way for campuses to earn income.”
CBORD® Announces Acquisition of Student Advantage® Membership Business
Deal adds important new service offering to CBORD’s campus card product line
Ithaca, New York and Boston, November 9, 2005– The CBORD Group, Inc., one of the world’s leading suppliers of campus card, housing, and foodservice management systems to colleges and universities, today announced that it has acquired Student Advantage, LLC, a subsidiary of RVS Ventures, Inc. Student Advantage is the purveyor of the nation’s largest student discount program, serving hundreds of thousands of student cardholders. The acquisition provides CBORD with a well-known university-endorsed consumer brand to augment its campus card and closed-loop payment systems to universities in the U.S., Canada, and abroad.
Bruce Lane, Executive Vice President of CBORD, said, “We are very excited to add the student marketing expertise that is the hallmark of Student Advantage to the services we offer our customers. Collectively, we will now have the added value that Student Advantage brings to students, parents, and university administrators.”
For more than a decade, hundreds of universities across the U.S. have worked with Student Advantage to market the membership program to their incoming students. Recently, Student Advantage launched a University ID co-branding initiative whereby a university can add the benefits of Student Advantage discounts directly to the University ID. CBORD will seek to provide the Student Advantage University ID program to the more than 1,000 universities it currently serves with its Odyssey PCS™ and CS Gold® campus card and housing and other management systems. In addition, Student Advantage will continue to be system neutral and available to all universities, regardless of which campus card system is being used.
Ray Sozzi, President of RVS Ventures, added, “We have seen a great demand for the University ID co-branded product from students and administrators alike, following the success of our initial launches. CBORD’s breadth and depth of relationships will allow for a dramatic acceleration in our national rollout, specifically to the more than six million students served by CBORD’s systems.”
The SA Cash off-campus payment system was not included in the transaction, and remains part of RVS Ventures.
CBORD is headquartered in Ithaca, New York, with offices in Farmington, New York; Green, Ohio; Waco, Texas; Cypress, California; and Sydney, Australia. Student Advantage, located in Boston, Massachusetts will operate as a subsidiary of CBORD.
About The CBORD Group, Inc.
The CBORD Group, Inc., founded in 1975, is marking thirty years of service to the campus-wide needs of higher-education facilities. CBORD works with a wide variety of clients and markets, providing cashless and ID card privilege control systems, housing management systems, Webfood online ordering service, and the Student Advantage discount membership program. In addition, CBORD serves thousands of chain restaurants, hospitals, universities, supermarkets, and gaming facilities with its suite of foodservice, catering, and nutrition software products. The CBORD Group has customers in the U.S., Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Australia. To learn more about CBORD, visit us at www.cbord.com.
About Student Advantage, LLC
Student Advantage, LLC is a leading integrated media and commerce company focused on the higher education market. Student Advantage works with hundreds of colleges, universities, and campus organizations and more than 20,000 discount locations to develop products and services enabling students to make purchases less expensively around campus, across the country, and online. The Company reaches its consumer base offline through the Student Advantage Discount Card and online through its www.studentadvantage.com website.
