Taking a 1,200-student boarding school fully cashless

The Challenge

A 1,200-student boarding school struggled with cash theft, unaccounted canteen sales, and parents with no insight into student spending. Manual reconciliation consumed days of staff time every week.

Discovery

We ran a two-week discovery embedded with the bursary and canteen teams, mapping every cash touchpoint and the peak-hour transaction load at the canteen and store.

The Solution

We deployed SafeSpend closed-loop wallets for every student, POS terminals at all vendor points, and a parent funding app with per-category spending limits. Offline-first terminals ensured service continuity during network drops.

Implementation

Rolled out in phases over six weeks: wallet provisioning, vendor terminal deployment, parent onboarding, and a two-week parallel run before retiring cash entirely.

Lessons Learned

• Offline resilience is non-negotiable in low-connectivity campuses.
• Parent onboarding drives adoption faster than student onboarding.
• A parallel-run period builds trust before cutting over.