When off campus and looking for a piece of plastic to pay for a meal with, students might soon be able to turn to their Blugold card to cover the bill.

UW-Eau Claire administrators and UW System officials are investigating the possibility of making the Blugold card work at retailers off campus.

Senior Cindy Kerska said she’s heard about the idea of making the Blugold card applicable off campus and she thinks it’s a good one.

Since Kerska lives off campus, she said she doesn’t keep much money on her Blugold card. But if there was the option to put money on the card for off-campus uses, she said, her parents would have an easy way to send her money if she needed it.

“We’ve been looking at ways to use our Blugold card more broadly to use toward other services,” Vice Chancellor Andy Soll said.

The idea of off-campus use of the Blugold card has been around for as long as four years, he said.

The university is investigating two options of making the card work off

campus.

The first is working with a company to establish a debit account to the card that would make it work where businesses accept Visa or Mastercard.

Two companies, a bank and a company that works with banks gave presentations to the administration, Soll said.

“We’ve also talked about the possibility of going to off-campus merchants and giving them the opportunity to accept the Blugold card for a fee,” Soll said.

The drawback to this option, Soll said, is that the university would have to make arrangements with off-campus merchants or hire an agent to do so.

Administrators have been meeting with employees in the business office and Blugold card office to evaluate the options for expanding the use of the card. Soll said the next meeting, scheduled for March 17, will discuss what procedures the university has to go through if it chooses to work with one of the two companies.

Before anything could be done to get the banking option on the Blugold card, Soll said the university has to find out how it can proceed.

System offices are working on the legal issues and logistics with the cards. Eau Claire needs System approval before taking any action.

Adding a banking function to campus cards has been a developing trend in higher education for the past several years, Soll said.

However, the idea of putting a branded debit option on cards surfaced recently, he said.

Last year, UW-Stout became the first System campus to put a debit option onto its campus cards with the launch of the Stout OneCard. It carries the Mastercard logo.

After Stout began the program, Soll said Eau Claire and other UW campuses began to explore the banking option in more detail.

“It is possible this could move very quickly and get implemented this fall,” Soll said.

The main group to benefit would be on-campus students, Kerska said. When she lived in the dorms, she said she used her Blugold card more often because she had a meal plan.

Allowing the card to be used at off-campus restaurants would give more freedom for on-campus students when they want to get something to eat besides food available on campus, she said.

While she likes the idea, Kerska said she already has a debit card and she wouldn’t be apt to use it as much as her other cards.