ePAYMENT and eSTATEMENT I-Rong Lin Group Leader, AdCom Services University of California, Irvine August 7-9, 2005

Issues  Support of enrollment growth without the increase of printing and mailing cost.  Collection of registration fees payment in a timely manner.  eSTATEMENT with a payment stub that has an embedded OCR scannable line for printing. We cannot require students to install additional OCR font on their computer for printing a payment stub.

Benefits  View up-to-second account information, monthly bill presentment, and financial and academic holds through Student Billing System.  Eliminate paper bills to save Irvine campus $138,000 annually.  Allow convenient, secure payments at no additional cost to students and other authorized payers from virtually anywhere using US banks.  Provide alternative for payment taking when the campus cashiering system goes down.

Challenges  Data security management.  Cryptographic API for single sign-on between Student Billing System (SBS) and Sallie Mae.  Third party payer process.  Payment stub printing with an embedded OCR scannable line.  Marketing ePAYMENT and eSTATEMENT.

Data Security Management  Authentication and authorization are implemented for login process.  HTTP secure (https) protocol POST and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection are used to transmit encrypted data.  Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is used to ensure that the source of information is only coming from one, predetermined location, and not some other source spoofing the original, trusted site.

Single Sign-on  When a student logs into the Student Billing System (SBS) to make an ePAYMENT, SBS passes the encrypted student information to Sallie Mae Payment Center for validating the identity of this student.  Once the validation process is completed, the student will see a payment screen displaying amount (s)he owes for payment process.

Third Party Payer Process  Before the third party payer can sign up for the ePAYMENT service, student must have signed up with our servicer through SBS and provided the third party payer with a PIN and his/her UCI Student ID number. Once the third party payer has that information, (s)he can go to the payment center on the Web to login and establish account profile to make an ePAYMENT.  Third party payer can make ePAYMENT using an bank account (s)he established when (s)he signed up for the service, or (s)he can make a one-time payment without saving bank account information

Payment Stub Printing with An Embedded OCR Scannable Line  An alternative is to allow students to print their own statements.  Problem: OCR (Optical Character Recognition) font may not be found on users’ computers.  Solution: iText School Student Internet PC Statements

Embeded OCR Solution - iText  What is iText?  iText is an open source Java class library used for creating PDF files.  Supports various page sizes, layouts, tables, fonts, colors, images, headers and footers, lists and templates.  Dynamic generation of PDF documents in real-time.  How does iText solve the OCR problem?  iText embeds OCR font within the PDF itself without requiring OCR font to be installed on student’s computer.  Payment stub is ensured to be scannable.  Code snippets

Sample iText Program Files File: SBS/PaymentStub/StubGenerator.java import com.lowagie.text.*; //libraries to generate pdf public StubGenerator( String AccountId ) { Document doc = new Document(); try { PdfWriter stubWriter = PdfWriter.getInstance( doc, new FileOutputStream( “PaymentStub/pdf/” + AccountID + “.pdf” ) ); //create the font to embed BaseFont OCRbase = BaseFont.createFont( “Fonts/OCRAEXT.TTF”, BaseFont.IDENTITY_H, BaseFont.EMBEDDED ); doc.open(); PdfContentByte stub =stubWriter.getDirectContent(); … TO BE CONTINUED //text to display in PDF document String OCR = “ ” stub.beginText(); stub.setFontAndSize( OCRbase, 12 ); stub.setTextMatrix( 40, ); stub.showText( OCR ); stub.endText(); } catch( Exception e ) { System.err.println( e.getMessage() ); } doc.close(); //flush and close output stream }

Sample iText Program Files File: StubGen.jsp <% String accountID = ""; accountID = (String)session.getAttribute( "AccountID" ); //instantiate object that generates the PDF StubGenerator Stub = new StubGenerator( accountID ); String FileName = accountID + ".pdf"; //redirect the user to view the pdf document response.sendRedirect( "PaymentStub/pdf/" + FileName ); %>

eSTATEMENT Cost  It took 1 FTE for 2 months to develop eSTATEMENT module locally, which allows students to their current account information to third party payer(s) and print payment stub with embedded OCR scannable line.

ePAYMENT Cost  In collaboration with UCOP, UC Berkeley, and UC Davis, it took us 0.5 FTE 5 months to complete RFP and vendor selection for ePAYMENT, 2.5 FTE for 3 months to implement it. The ePAYMENT and eSTATEMENT application was implemented in late September,  Servicer's charges: $3,000 for initial implementation; $0.25 per ePAYMENT transaction; $5 per reject or return.

Statistics for ePAYMENT Transactions  Winter 2005, out of 15,322 cash transactions that amount to $ million dollars, Irvine had 4,132 ACH transactions totaling to $8.15 million dollars.  Spring 2005, out of 13,672 cash transactions that amount to $26 million dollars, Irvine had 3,990 ACH transactions totaling to $7.92 million dollars.  Percentage of ePAYMENT trans is increased.

Into the Future  Projected acceptance rate for ePAYMENT for Fall 2005 will be increased from 30% to 40%.  Development of parent access to student account information.

Thank You To all our colleagues in:  Accounting and Fiscal Services  Administrative Computing Services  UC Office of the President  Sallie Mae