More than 2 million students across the country receive refund money faster through Higher One's OneDisburse(R) Refund Management(R)

New Haven, CT - Higher One, a financial services and payment company focused exclusively on higher education, has welcomed a record 88 new college and university partners representing more than 375,000 students from January through April of this year. Each of these institutions has selected Higher One to help improve student services through electronic refund distribution.

"Higher One's value proposition is extremely appealing to institutions of higher education right now, given the funding hardships many colleges and universities currently face," said Dean Hatton, president and CEO at Higher One. "We can help institutions experience significant cost savings in as little as 8 weeks through the elimination of paper check refunds and we can offer all students an optional no minimum balance, no monthly fee, FDIC-Insured checking account designed by students."

Colleges and universities are required to return any residual money in a student account to the student. This money is commonly known as a refund or award. Traditionally institutions have distributed these funds by handing students paper checks at a central office on campus or by mailing paper checks to students.

More recently colleges and universities have experimented with building and managing their own electronic refund distribution programs on campus or implementing software to assist in the collection of student banking information.

Both the paper check and the ACH methods of refund distribution have proven cost and labor intensive on the part of the institutions. In many cases temporary laborers are brought in or staff from other departments are temporarily reassigned to assist in the distribution of refund money to students and to handle any subsequent customer service issues.

Internally managed direct deposit programs are often plagued by low enrollment numbers. What results are two refund distribution programs run simultaneously by the college or university.

Aside from significant labor considerations and low enrollment numbers, schools who've implemented internally managed electronic refund distribution programs have experienced difficulty in keeping student banking information secure.

With Higher One's patented refund distribution service, institutions send Higher One a file with student names and refund amounts and a wire for the total amount to be distributed. That's all it takes for the institution to experience 100% enrollment in Higher One's program.

Higher One educates the campus community about the new service, collects, updates, and protects student banking information and refund preferences, distributes refunds based on each student's refund preference, handles any ACH bounce backs or returned checks, fields any refund related customer service inquiries, maintains compliance with Department of Education guidelines and other regulations, and provides staff with access to real-time, online reports regarding refunds.

The institutions benefit from the cost avoidance Higher One's OneDisburse Refund Management service delivers. In addition, refund payments are delivered to students faster.

Since signing its first client in 2002, Higher One has accumulated more than 300 clients across the country distributing refunds to over 2 Million students. Higher One has eliminated 4 Million paper checks on the way to distributing more than $7.6 billion dollars.


About Higher One:

Founded in 2000, Higher One provides higher education institutions and their students with efficient, convenient and easy-to-use solutions to handle financial disbursements. These include: student refunds, on-campus and community purchases, payroll and employee expenses, as well as the collection of payments from students, parents, and sponsors.

Higher One offers a suite of online banking services including the OneAccount, an FDIC-Insured checking account, and OneCard, a Debit MasterCard(R). To date, Higher One has disbursed over $7.6 billion dollars in refunds for its clients to more than 2 Million students, faculty, and staff at over 300 distinguished public and private higher education institutions throughout the country.

Higher One recently ranked #79 on the 2008 Fast 500 list of the 500 Fastest Growing Technology Companies in the United States. Higher One is based in New Haven, CT.