Friday, October 21, 2011

Accept Credit Cards At The Laundry

Accept Credit Cards In The Laundry Room

accept credit cards
Laundry Rooms Accept Credit Cards
Accept Credit Cards in the laundry room?  What a marvel idea and it comes from a place we are used to getting a bunch of our smart ideas.  Yale University is one of the first in the country to begin to accept credit cards in the campus laundry rooms.
It may not seem like the type of technological breakthroughs we often hear about from a major University but if you have ever lived on a college campus, then you know how difficult it can be to get your laundry done.   In the old days you had to find some quarters or find a place that would make change for you, load up your laundry and hope that when you made it to the machine, it would be available for use.
At least at Yale, the students could load money onto a cash card for use in the laundry room which would eliminate the need to scrounge up some change but you still had to take the extra step of loading the card.  In Yale’s case the washing machines were not very reliable because of the tendency for the cash cards to fall apart and jam up the reading mechanism so upgrading to units that accept credit cards could be a better option.
The new machines are far better.  Even though it took a major upgrade to redo the laundry system at Yale, it will pay for itself in convenience for the busy students.  All machines are linked to a central website which will indicate when and where washing machines are functioning properly and available.  So far the machines are very reliable and the student feedback is overwhelmingly positive.  The cost for students has remained the same but it is unclear if the university has taken on merchant fees or transaction charges.
Again, the way our college students do their laundry may not be newsworthy for some, but how much life can change when you accept credit cards is.  In this case it is a huge time saver as opposed to finding change and heading to machines that may or may not be in use.  Time is our only resource we can not get more of and our only option is to use it more efficiently.  This is a good lesson for all but for college students just learning to manage their time and live on their own it is perhaps more challenging.  Combining online centralization and accepting credit cards in the laundry room is truly an on campus breakthrough.