Cashless Payment System - Any Recommendations/Horror Stories?

[JRA]

Hello all,

 

Just had a brief meeting with one provider and not outrageously impressed. Looking for something to (hopefully) replace the WorldPay card reader system currently, hopefully with SIMS integration, online portal for parents to make payments, pay for lunches/trips... the usual I guess!

 

In a former life used Squid (if that's still even a thing) but had very little to do with the setup of that.

 

I guess what I'm asking is what do you use, do you like it and how was the setup/how is living with it?

 

Thanks all for any thoughts on that!

[Gongalong]

We've used SCOPAY for 15+ years. Not amazing, but I'm not sure anyone in the market is. Problems do get resolved and they seem competent enough.

[Rob_D]

For paying for school things, we use parentpay.

Edited May 8 by Rob_D

[bobsmith]

the MIS you use will have some influence on the system you use.

 

what MIS are you currently running?

we're currently SIMS with ipay - but I've used parentpay with both SIMS and Bromcom in the past and it works reasonably well.

[TheRobins]

ParentPay seems to be the leader, Have used for many years along side SIMS and now Bromcom. It sounds a bit of a silly suggestion, but look at what systems your feeder schools either way use and see if there is a pattern. Our whole cluster use ParentPay and it makes transition very easy.

 

To be fair they are much the same in terms of what they can do, but always check for compatibility with systems such as your catering system's if you have one. 

[BKGarry]

What Cashless Catering System are you using, as that may make a big difference there too.

 

we used to use sQuid, but moved over to iPayImpact (after sQuid closed up in the UK) and had to make workaround to get to be able to send parents their code details via email, as it does not collect any parent information for setup and therefore does not give any registration details out for this.

[David44]

28 minutes ago, BKGarry said:

What Cashless Catering System are you using, as that may make a big difference there too.

 

we used to use sQuid, but moved over to iPayImpact (after sQuid closed up in the UK) and had to make workaround to get to be able to send parents their code details via email, as it does not collect any parent information for setup and therefore does not give any registration details out for this.

Slightly off-topic, what was your workaround for the codes?

We have a Powershell script that matches students from iPayImpact to their contacts (parents) in SIMS and then sends the student code to their their contacts (assuming no court order etc.). We use a Google Sheets "frontend" to select the student(s) we want codes to be sent for.

We still have to periodically manually sign in to iPayImpact to download the CSV file of codes though. I wonder if you have found a way of avoiding that.

[BKGarry]

 

15 minutes ago, David44 said:

Slightly off-topic, what was your workaround for the codes?

We have a Powershell script that matches students from iPayImpact to their contacts (parents) in SIMS and then sends the student code to their their contacts (assuming no court order etc.). We use a Google Sheets "frontend" to select the student(s) we want codes to be sent for.

We still have to periodically manually sign in to iPayImpact to download the CSV file of codes though. I wonder if you have found a way of avoiding that.

 

User defined fields in Arbor that have to be populated when they join, which makes Year 7 and 12 interesting

[JRA]

Thanks all for the info on this one.

 

MIS here is SIMS btw.

[CHiAntz]

On 07/05/2026 at 14:32, JRA said:

Hello all,

 

Just had a brief meeting with one provider and not outrageously impressed. Looking for something to (hopefully) replace the WorldPay card reader system currently, hopefully with SIMS integration, online portal for parents to make payments, pay for lunches/trips... the usual I guess!

 

In a former life used Squid (if that's still even a thing) but had very little to do with the setup of that.

 

I guess what I'm asking is what do you use, do you like it and how was the setup/how is living with it?

 

Thanks all for any thoughts on that!

 

We have a new system we're launching to provide a more modern approach to online payments, etc. I know i'm a little late to the party here but would love to give you a look if you're still looking into this 😊