HIGHER ONE ONEDISBURSE REFUND MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS HELP THE UNIVERSITY OF WEST GEORGIA AND KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY WIN 2004 BEST PRACTICES AWARD FROM THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA BOARD OF REGENTS

Universities best 74 entries from 26 institutions to win 1st place award of $15,000

NEW HAVEN, CT, February 8, 2005 – The University of West Georgia (UWG) and Kennesaw State University (KSU) are joint winners of a 2004 Best Practices Award for their implementation of a new disbursement management program provided by Higher One. UWG and KSU won first place in the Finance and Business category, receiving $15,000 jointly from the State University System of Georgia Board of Regents. The Best Practices Award was founded in 2003 to recognize innovative and efficient programs, business models and to reward excellence in Georgia higher education institutions. There were 75 submissions from 26 institutions in four categories. Winners were selected based on the impact on operations; benefits provided to students, faculty, staff and others; and effectiveness and efficiencies created, including cost savings, cost avoidance or productivity increases.

“We are pleased that two of our University clients have won this distinguished award for best practices,” said Dean Hatton, President and CEO, Higher One. “It is an objective recognition of the quantifiable cost savings and efficiencies that our refund management programs are creating for a growing number of universities nationwide.”

Higher One‚s OneDisburseSM service, which both Universities employ, enables institutions to create significant cost avoidance and increases service in the financial disbursements process compared to disbursing via paper check or ACH direct deposit. Students are able to choose one of three options to receive their money through this new system. Students can choose an Easy Refund to the OneAccount (accessible through their card), an ACH transfer to an outside bank account, or a paper check mailed to the address they specify. Regardless of the student preference, Higher One handles the delivery of the money to the student. The West Georgia OneCard and KSU Debit Card function as a debit MasterCard® Card, which is accepted by more than 31 million merchants worldwide. Cardholders can get cash from ATMs, send and receive money electronically, and manage their accounts online.

Higher One provides universities with a new refund management service that reduces the cost of administration for disbursements, including savings on paper checks, ACH, staff time and postage. Universities make approximately $15 billion in refund disbursements to students per year through more than 15 million payments. The processing and handling of these payments, along with associated customer services, is estimated to cost universities over $225 million per year. Since September 2002, Higher One has processed over half a billion dollars in refund disbursements comprising more than 340,000 individual payments.

Higher One clients have said that its programs allow universities to save administrative jobs and maintain enrollments. A mid-size university of 15,000 can typically create $500,000 per year in cost avoidance through Higher One‚s OneDisburseSM and OneFinanceSM services.

In 2002, UWG and KSU decided to revise their student financial refund process in order to create new efficiencies to create cost avoidance by eliminating paper check disbursement and increase student choice and student service. After a year of process evaluation and investigation of alternative solutions, they partnered to gain approval from the State University System of Georgia Board of Regents to implement Electronic Fund Distribution with Higher One‚s suite of services. Prior to adopting the Higher One model, UWG and KSU had a number of processes that did not support electronic fund distribution and were instead paper-check based. The distribution of paper-checks is an unsatisfactory process for all parties: it‚s costly, labor-intensive and has built in lag time of up to seven days. During a typical fall semester, both schools would disburse millions of dollars in aid, print thousands of checks, and sort them and then disburse to students over several days. Students endured long lines, inclement weather and an unsatisfactory response from some banks when they went to cash them.

UWG and KSU have realized substantial, measurable impacts on institutional operations with Higher One‚s program. Student Benefits o The wait time for access to funds has been reduced by seven days for KSU students and three days for students at West Georgia. o Approximately 9800 (58%) of KSU students and 6364 (66%) of UWG students receive a refund each semester. University Administration - Check printing and reconciling for refunds has been reduced by 90%. - At UWG Bursar/Student Financial Services, checks disbursed annually have been reduced from 22,796 to 3400 (85%). - Time required for check printing has been reduced from 43 hours to almost no time. - More than one-thousand (1048) man-hours have been saved in preparing and disbursing checks. - Costs of $450 in casual labor have been saved. - At KSU, postage cost has been reduced 90%.

Other direct benefits: · Students: 61.3% of UWG students and 51.5% of KSU students are using the OneCard and the OneAccount one year after the program launch. · University Staff: can devote more time to customer service activities vs. stuffing, sorting, mailing or manually distributing paper checks. Balancing Reports quickly verify processing activity. Online tools make it easy to track funds. · Administrators: Web reports provide on-request information to monitor the electronic refund program. Enables staff to be proactive by reviewing reports and contacting students who have not selected a refund option.

Higher One has become the standard of service for American higher education institutions looking for the most efficient, student-centric, and cost-effective way of disbursing financial refunds. It currently serves 17 public and private university clients helping them disburse over half a Billion dollars through over 340,000 individual payments

Higher One’s OneDisburse service is the only comprehensive refund management solution available to colleges and universities. Unlike EFT programs or stored value refund card programs, OneDisburse is a patent pending service that offers students three choices to receive their refunds while eliminating many of the costs associated with refund delivery for the university. These include Easy Refund (an instantly available refund to their OneAccount), ACH to any 3rd party bank, or a paper check. Regardless of the student preference, Higher One handles the delivery of the refund. In addition, Higher One handles: management of student refund preferences; collection and archiving of ACH authorization forms; exception handling; refund returns; rerouting of checks; errors and refund reversals; reconciliation and archiving; customer service; regulatory compliance; and online reporting of refund statuses.

About Higher One

Focused exclusively on higher education, Higher One provides refund management services to higher education institutions and banking services to members of their community through a card based solution. Higher One’s integrated solution helps universities reduce administrative costs, streamline business processes, create new revenue streams, increase student customer service and strengthen the campus community. Higher One’s refund service, OneDisburse, provides students with more choice and better service for receiving financial refunds. Higher One also offers a suite of banking services called OneFinance, which includes the OneAccount, a no minimum balance, no monthly fee checking account, the OneCard, a debit MasterCard® Card for ATM withdrawals purchases, and exclusive features such as “Send Money”, Easy Refund, and Campus Autoload for stored value programs. The OneFinance and OneDisburse solutions can be integrated with the institution’s ID card or provided through a separate “refund only” card. To date, Higher One has disbursedhalf aBillion dollars in refunds for its university clients.More than 250,000 students, faculty, and staff at distinguished public and private universities use Higher One’s services through their ID or refund card.

For more information visit www.higherone.com. Banking services are provided through an agreement with Horizon Capital Bank, member FDIC.