Online Payments

[brevity]

Hi all,

 

Our school is hoping to join the 21st century and sign up to an online payment provider.

 

I'd love to hear your experiences - especially those who have used more than one provider (We use Cunninghams for cashless if that makes a difference).

 

What extra services do they offer?

 

What are the charges like?

 

What is the support like?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Sylv3r]

We used sQuid previously and had no issues, however 12 months ago we moved to SchoolComms so we could have an integrated Messaging, Reporting and Payment system as well as a mobile app in One.

 

The charges are reasonable and when ever I have needed to use the support, the person who picks up the phone 9/10 resolves my issue first time.

 

We are also a CRB Cunninghams user and it integrates well - there's a slight bit of work to carry out the implementation of the system and there's a charge from CRB for this.

 

If it's just a payment system you are after for cashless catering, CRB over their own solution but I don't know what it's like.

 

If I could think of a couple of suggestions that I would like to see Schoolcomms include they would be:

 

Ability to auto top-up accounts, we had this with sQuid where the parent would setup something where the lunch accounts would credit automatically each week

 

Ability to inform parents easily with a low balance, this is possible with Schoolcomms but it's a bit of a one system for all - some students who don't use the canteen may have a £0.00 balance, but would still receive a text message / email saying the balance is low based on the threshold you have to set i.e. accounts under a certain balance.