Prove It in 48 Hours: Why Your Campus Card Program Is Overpaying
July 01, 2026Let's Talk About Cards
I've been working in higher education, specifically the mobile credential and card space since 2017, and if there's one thing I can say with confidence, it's this: the card programs that run the tightest ships are almost never the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones that ask the uncomfortable questions.
One of those questions? When did you last benchmark your card stock pricing?
I'll be honest. I used to assume most institutions were on top of this. Then I started actually asking. The answer, more often than not, is some version of "we haven't" or "I think someone did that before I got here." And that's not a knock on anyone. Card programs are busy operations. You're managing issuance, access control, lost cards, system updates. Stopping to audit your vendor relationship isn't always top of the list.
Here's What Everyone is Missing
Campuses upgrade their access control infrastructure. They move to DESFire, or MIFARE, or HID Seos. Totally the right call. But the card stock order? Still the same as it was five years ago. Same vendor, same card type, same price. Nobody flagged it. And the vendor certainly wasn't going to bring it up.
That's the gap I want to talk about today. Not because it's anyone's fault, but because it's fixable, and faster than most people think.
Enter Chris Patrick
When I want to understand what's actually happening on the ground in campus card programs, I go to Chris Patrick. Chris has been with Illumia since 2010 and has worked with more card offices than I can count. He's the kind of person who can tell you the difference between a DESFire EV2 and EV3 encoding issue before his coffee is cold. Whether it's legacy mag stripe still hanging on for dear life, proximity cards that should have retired years ago, or the full NFC stack; DESFire, MIFARE, iClass, SEOS. Chris has seen every variation and knows exactly where each one trips people up.
I asked him what he sees when he first sits down with a new institution. His answer:
"Every institution I've seen run a benchmark has found savings. Not always huge, but always real. And the benchmark itself costs nothing." - Chris Patrick, Sr. Sales Director, Credential Services
Five Questions Chris Always Starts With
These aren't trick questions. They're just the ones that tend to open things up:
- What card technologies am I actually ordering, and do they still match my access control infrastructure?
- When did I last run a competitive price comparison against current market rates?
- What are my true per-card costs, including encoding, shipping, and minimum order thresholds?
- Is my current vendor compatible with where my campus credential roadmap is heading?
- Have I explored whether a single vendor can consolidate my card stock and reduce complexity?
If any of those landed funny, that's probably worth a conversation. Not a sales call. An actual conversation with someone who has been in this space long enough to just give you a straight answer.
That person is Chris. He's the one who will walk you through what your program actually looks like against the market, tell you whether there's a gap worth closing, and be upfront if there isn't. No pressure, no runaround.
Check out what we put together below. If it sparks a question, Chris is the right person to ask.
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