Creating a one-stop-shop for K12 schools with Embedded Payments | Episode 18

As software companies navigate a competitive landscape, many have turned to Embedded Payments for strategic differentiation and growth. Those that integrate payment processing into their environment can take control of the customer experience and deliver a more complete offering.

Infinite Campus knows the value of Embedded Payments and partnered with Payrix to integrate education payment solutions into their popular student information system (SIS) for K-12 school districts. David Van Meter, Infinite Campus’s Chief Product Officer joined PayFAQ: The Embedded Payments Podcast to discuss the history and value of the partnership.

Upgrading Infinite Campus with education payment solutions

Having spent more than 20 years with the company, David has seen Infinite Campus grow from a team of eight, to more than 500 and counting. Today, with more than 2,000 K-12 school districts in their customer portfolio — along with five state departments of education — Infinite Campus manages data for more than eight million students across 45 states.

After working with a “mom-and-pop” payment solutions shop for several years, a series of changes impacted the experience for Infinite Campus, leading them to explore other options. The search for a new partner began, based on their evolved set of criteria:

• White labeling. One of the most critical missions for Infinite Campus is to provide customers with a streamlined experience by replacing multiple, disparate third-party solutions with one cohesive, integrated system. David said that to create a one-stop shop, they needed the ability to control the user experience and provide a service that kept their customers within the Infinite Campus ecosystem.
• High technology. “We are a high-tech company, and we expect our partners to be high-tech companies,” said David. “We needed a solid and current technology foundation in our [new] partner. We needed them to be big enough to have broad experience, but not so big that we got lost in the shuffle.”
• Superior features. David said his team was also seeking advanced capabilities including automation, robust reporting, and enhanced merchant boarding speed.
• Industry agnostic. “One of the big issues we had with our previous vendor was that they competed with us directly in the education space after several years,” said David. “And so, we needed to find a vendor that was agnostic to the industry their partners were in.”

With all boxes checked, the Infinite Campus team partnered with Payrix to roll out their education payment solutions and broaden their capabilities. What started as the basic collection of fees for things like parking and lab courses has evolved to support a food service program, school store, and extracurricular registrations.

Enhancing the customer experience with Embedded Payments

For David’s team, it really comes down to control of the user experience. He says K-12 school districts have traditionally had to source many different vendors to address their various needs. Infinite Campus’s response has been to create a more uniform experience by “connecting the dots for customers so they don’t have to go to five, six, seven different vendors” or have parents put their payment information into multiple systems.

By embedding payments with Payrix, Infinite Campus can deliver a seamless user experience and maintain brand continuity for their customers. David also notes that the education space is unique because educators don’t typically view themselves as merchants or businesses. This requires Infinite Campus to carefully consider the terminology they use with their customers. “Being able to customize, for example, the merchant application so that it’s language they understand, has been important,” said David.

Another major benefit, according to David, has been access to Payrix’s modern REST API technology because it “eliminates technical debt, and improves our ability to deliver more flexible solutions.” He also highlighted Payrix’s speed of boarding as a key value proposition and critical KPI for his team. “With our previous solution, it could take us up to a month, on average, to get a customer boarded,” he said. “[Now] we’re down to about a two to three-day average for boarding, which is just amazing — something that was unattainable before.”

Advice for software companies embedding payment solutions

For those new to Embedded Payments, David recommends taking the time to explore the full suite of technology and capabilities of a payment solutions partner like Payrix. He encourages software companies to leave the confines of previous experiences behind and says to instead focus on the possibilities ahead.

“Something I tell my own customers is you’ve always done things the way you’ve done them, because that’s the limitation you had in front of you. You have a different system that you’re bringing in-house now, so open your mind,” concluded David.

Discover more about Embedded Payments and how they’ve impacted software companies like Infinite Campus in this and other episodes of PayFAQ: The Embedded Payments Podcast.

• Full Transcript

  Bob Butler

  Hi, everyone. Welcome to the PayFAQ: Embedded Payments podcast brought to you by Payrix. I’m your host, Bob Butler. And today I’m going to be talking with David Van Meter, Chief Product Officer for Infinite Campus about the payment solution they rolled out to their K-12 school customers and the benefit they’ve seen from using it. So hi, David, welcome to the show.

  David Van Meter

  Hi, Bob. Thanks. It’s great to be here.

  Bob Butler

  Hey, Dave, can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your experience and a lot about Infinite Campus itself?

  David Van Meter

  Sure. So, I’m a math computer science guy by trade got into enterprise software development and implementation in my early years, and have a lot of a services background, software implementation in addition to development. I’ve been with Infinite Campus for just over 20 years now. After coming out of kind of the commercial ERP space, we wanted to bring kind of the benefits of what we see in technology to K-12. Infinite Campus was founded a little over a quarter century ago, 26 years, we manage student data for over 8 million students in 45 states across the country, strictly US based. We have about 2,000 school districts in those 45 states that use our product. We also have five state departments of education that license our software for districts in their states. Our headquarters are in Blaine, Minnesota, which is where I’m talking to you from today. We’re founded by our CEO and founder Charlie Kratsch. And we’ve been delivering SIS solutions and integrated systems to our K-12 school districts for all those years. And my role at Campus has evolved over that time. Obviously, when I started, we were 7 employees, and now just at 500 employees. So that’s a little bit of background.

  Bob Butler

  Interesting. Well, as for payments, how are they integrated into the Infinite Campus ecosystem? And can you describe a few use cases?

  David Van Meter

  Yeah, sure. The group that I manage today is called Premium Suites. And what we do is we develop additional products that essentially displace other third-party systems out there. Payments was a system that we developed beginning about 12 or 13 years ago. And we started out small. I mean, we started out by being able to allow school districts to collect fees for things like parking, or lab or course fees, essentially, a fairly generic way for school districts to be able to collect the fees that they needed to collect. We evolved into food service accounts. So, we have a full point of sale offering for school districts. And as part of that, parents being able to fund their students’ lunch accounts. And we’ve evolved in the last couple of years to add in a full-service school store, as well as a public store so that the school districts can offer anybody essentially in their communities, any kind of services or products that they want to provide. Then we most recently introduced activity registration. So, think about registering for football, or volleyball, or baseball, or chess club. There’s all sorts of forms associated with it. But there’s always also some sort of payment linkage to that. And so just to give you a sense, our customers have traditionally had to go out and source many different vendors to be able to do essentially each of those things. And so our objective has been to connect the dots for our customers so that they don’t have to go to 5,6,7 different vendors to be able to kind of provide this experience to their parents, and provide that in a way that is uniform for those parents so that they don’t have to remember 5,6,7 different sets of user credentials and what not, and put their payments information into a bunch of different systems. So that’s kind of how payments fits into the Campus ecosystem.

  Bob Butler

  I love the way that you view that from the user experience point of view. So, what led to that decision to move to Payrix? And what specifically did we offer that maybe others didn’t, that was attractive to you?

  David Van Meter

  That’s an interesting story. The vendor that we had been using, we had started with several years ago, obviously, and they were kind of a mom-and-pop PayFac back in the day, focused in a vertical that we didn’t service. And it was a really good relationship, but it ended up being acquired and then merged and had several changes to the organization. And it ended up being a very different experience for us towards the end. At that point, we decided we needed to go out and search for a new partner. And we started with a list of things that we thought were important based on our previous experience and kind of where we were. First and foremost, we are a technology company, we are a high-tech company. And we expect our partners to be high-tech companies as well. And so, we needed a solid and current technology foundation in our partner. We needed them to be big enough to have broad experience, but not so big that we got lost in the shuffle. One of the big issues that we had with our previous vendor was they competed with us directly in the education space after several years. And so, we needed to find a vendor that was agnostic to the industry that their partners were in. And so that led us to the final item which and these are kind of the top five, if you will, there are several others. But the white-labeling the ability to provide, essentially a service to our customers, that was managed by us, that the integration was managed by us. And all of kind of the interactions with the payment aspect of our product was through Infinite Campus. That was not true of the previous solution. And so, in addition, lots of different things like being able to do automation, better reporting, speed of boarding, and ultimately, in the end, controlling the user experience.

  Bob Butler

  Yeah, I think it always gets back to that user experience. So, what are some of the advantages Infinite Campus has seen? And how have your customers benefited from your specific payment solution now that it’s up and running on the Infinite Campus platform?

  David Van Meter

  So, that’s a really good question. Our objective going into this for our customers was obviously to create a more cohesive experience for them. But I think from an Infinite Campus point of view, we’ve benefited most from the modern REST API technology that you guys use. The expectation, again, from Infinite Campus and our technology team is we want to be able to use the latest and greatest technology, there’s a reason for that. It eliminates technical debt; it improves our ability to deliver more flexible solutions. And so that’s probably the number one thing that I would say that that Infinite Campus has benefited from. One of the things that I’d love to talk about, because this was something that I harped on constantly with our previous solution. And that’s the speed of boarding. In our previous solution, it could take us up to a month (30 to 31 days, on average) to get a customer boarded. And what I’ve been able to see so far as we’ve transitioned into go live with over 800 plus merchants over the past 12 months is that we’re down to about a two to three day average for boarding, which is just amazing. Something that was just unattainable before. But I also think that the education space specifically is a very unique kind of animal. They’re not your traditional businesses that you would think of as merchants. And so, it’s really important that the terminology that we use with school districts meets kind of where they are, how they view themselves in the world. And so being able to customize, for example, the merchant application so that it’s language that they understand, has been important. I think all of the customer-facing content that we provide, whether it be the application or inside our product is consistent. And again, user experience.

  Bob Butler

  So, as you look at any KPIs or success metrics, are you able to share any that have actually worked for Infinite Campus? Whether it be around growth, stickiness, anything along those lines?

  David Van Meter

  That’s an interesting question. Again, in the education space, they don’t really think of themselves necessarily as businesses. They’re educators, they’re there to provide for the future leaders of our country. And so, when we think about the ability for us to as a business at Infinite Campus, increase revenues, decreased costs, those kinds of things. We look at the last couple of years, which overlap with our implementation with Payrix. And it’s been the pandemic, right? And so, we’ve all seen the churn that our school districts have faced over that two year period of being in session, being in school, being remote, being able to do activities not being able to do activities, canceling last minute, those kinds of things. So, from a revenue standpoint, we haven’t seen a huge uptick. But that’s not because of the technology that’s because of the world. But again, I’ll go back to that boarding, it’s the ability to board 30 days faster, essentially, than we were before is probably the biggest KPI that I would point to. That’s improved for us in this time. But we’re starting to see things come back right now that we’re going from pandemic to endemic people are starting to figure out how to work through the environment that we live in now. And we’re starting to see kids back in school, we’re starting to see activities, pick back up, state tournaments, all that kind of stuff is coming back. So, I expect that a year from now we’ll be able to give you a better answer that.

  Bob Butler

  I appreciate that. So, are there any insights, best practices, gotchas, that any newcomers to Embedded Payments in our audience that you might want to share with them?

  David Van Meter

  You know, the most important thing I think that I can share is take the time to really explore the technology that’s available to you through the APIs. Because it’s expensive. And the ability to kind of, I don’t know, if you can leave the baggage of your previous experience behind and just focus on what could be or what can be, I think you’ll have a much better experience. It took us a little bit of time to kind of take off our this is the way we used to do things hat. And being a services guy and implementation guy by trade. That’s something that I always would talk to customers about is you’ve always done things the way you’ve done them, because that’s the limitation that you had in front of you, you have a different system that you’re bringing in-house now. So, open your mind, think about it. There are lots of features and functions embedded in the technology that can really reduce the amount of work that you have to do during integration. So, take the time to do that leave the baggage at the door. And just remember, every platform is unique. Many of the core features are the same, but the way you get to them, particularly in the Payrix platform is unique and beneficial.

  Bob Butler

  That makes a lot of sense. So, you have any final thoughts you’d like to leave with our audience? And, Dan, really appreciate you being here today.

  David Van Meter

  Yeah, no, thanks Bob. The last thing I’ll just say is the payments business at Infinite Campus is a small but growing business. It’s probably 2 or 3% of our overall revenue at the moment. But it’s been growing steadily over this time. And well, the overall development organization at campus is nearly 300 developers strong. We had two developers, a business analyst and a quality assurance professional that did this work, did this integration work did it reasonably rapidly. And the assistance that we got along the way from the Payrix team was great. And so, I say dive in and give it a shot.

  Bob Butler

  Dave, thanks so much for being on the show.

  David Van Meter

  My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

  Bob Butler

  I know we’re both big believers in sharing knowledge and experience. So again, really appreciate you joining us today.

  David Van Meter

  Sure, happy to be here.

  Bob Butler

  We want to be a trusted resource for software providers like Infinite Campus who are out there trying to make sense of Embedded Payments and PayFac and to help get the education they need to make the business decisions their customers and investors will thank them for.

  Thank you for joining us today on The PayFAQ: Embedded Payments podcast brought to you by Payrix. For more information about Embedded Payments, subscribe to our show at payrix.com/podcasts.