Since Monday April 14, all members of the Brandeis community have had the option of adding WhoCash to their student ID cards online from the Campus Card Office Web site with credit or debit cards, said Anne Livermore, assistant director for student technical services in Library and Technology Services said. Before the online software was implemented, it was necessary to go to the Campus Card Office and add value by cash or check.

In December, Livermore told the Justice that LTS hoped to have the system online close to the time when WhoCash became available for printing and copying after February break.

Livermore explained that the delay in the online system was due to the interaction of the new software's allowing for online addition with two financial services, a credit card processing company, and a Campus Card Office Brandeis bank account that stores all WhoCash. The software accounts for the allocation of WhoCash balances to individual students, she said.

The new software allowing for the online addition, comes from C-Board, a company that provides the Campus Card software involved in printing ID Cards and storing all ID card information in a database called CS Gold, Livermore explained. The new software is a plugin, or module, for that database called Netcardmanager allowing for the new online functionality, she said. "It communicates the three ways between CS Gold, the credit card processing companies and the bank."

LTS and the treasury had to work on finding a common method of communication between those instances, she explained. "The information sent by the credit card-processing companies to the bank has to match the type and format of information that the bank expects," she said. "And both the credit card company and the bank need to be speaking on the same terms as the software."

During the last week of March, "the software was accurately adding WhoCash to students accounts," she said. "But getting it to charge the credit card and put money in Brandeis' bank account took a little longer because there are many different types of bank accounts," she explained. She said that LTS worked with the treasurer's office through trial and error to find the right type of bank account, an e-commerce bank account, that could receive information from the software. A similar issue existed with regard to establishing the right kind of connection between the software and the credit card processing company.

The new software was registering the numerical amount a user wanted to add online to his WhoCash account, but the actual transactions were not yet going through, she explained.

Brandeis community members can currently log in to the system using their UNET username on the campus card Web page. Users can view their current balance and their entire transaction history. Users also have the option to report a lost card 24 hours a day, which, Livermore explained, disables the card's swipe access.

In addition to the option of adding money from a personal credit card, an "Invite to Deposit" option also exists. Livermore explained that the link generates a special private link a students can send to other individuals, enabling them to add money to the account as well, without giving their username or password. Livermore told the Justice in previous interviews that this functionality enables parents to deposit money in student bank accounts.

A charge of $1 is deducted when a user adds WhoCash online. Livermore said each company that handles the money "exacts a small fee" that adds up to about a dollar. The University will receive bills from those companies and will pay them using the collected fees, she said.

Livermore warned that students who had never used WhoCash before could have problems using the online option immediately. In that case, she said, students should e-mail the Campus Card Office with their full name requesting the opening of an account. Over the summer, Livermore said, LTS has plans to take a full list of students who have never used WhoCash before to ensure that each has an empty WhoCash account.

In concert with the launch of the online system, the hardware repair shop in Feldberg now accepts WhoCash in addition to cash or checks as a payment system, she added.

Some students interviewed were enthusiastic about the new option.

"That would be great, I always really wished I could do that," Graham Miller '09 said earlier this semester, when asked about the possibility of WhoCash online. "You always have to come down here [Kutz] and bring cash. It's a little annoying."

"I'm glad it was a situation in which a good idea was able to come to fruition, and the interests of the students and of the University were aligned to bring Whocash online," said Union President Jason Gray, who advocated for the change. "I put on $10 yesterday," he said, "I think it works well.