Many Dartmouth students and alumni may begin carrying a different sort of green card in the very near future.
With last month's launch of its affinity credit card program, the College has become one of a growing number of schools offering their own brand of plastic payment.
The cards, which feature a photo of Dartmouth Hall in the winter, are available as both Visa and Mastercard, Alumni Leadership Coordinator Lynne Gaudet said.
Though targeted specifically at undergraduates, graduate students and alumni, the card is available to anyone in the Dartmouth community. Students at Dartmouth Medical School, the Thayer School of Engineering and the Tuck School of Business were not chosen for marketing because they may have their own credit cards in the future, Gaudet said.
MBNA Bank sent information to students and alumni in December just before the end of Fall term using lists provided by the Office of Alumni Affairs. Though these lists are normally confidential, they were released as a result of the contract on condition that those on the list can opt out by contacting the College or the bank.
So far, Alumni Affairs has not yet received any negative feedback about the cards or the marketing, Gaudet said. She said it would be hard to determine the level of response at this early date, especially since Alumni Affairs was closed for much of December.
In a series of negotiations lasting over three years, the College investigated various banks before deciding on MBNA in September.
Universities have had varying experiences with the banks. FirstUSA, for example, maintains contracts with both Yale University and the University of Notre Dame. While FirstUSA has not marketed the Yale card, which was met with limited success according to alumni officers there, Notre Dame has even sent information to potential football fans across the nation though they are otherwise unaffiliated.
"We received overwhelmingly positive feedback about MBNA," Gaudet said. "This was not the case with some of the other companies."
MBNA has a reputation for good customer service, and boasts a fairly competitive rate, Gaudet said, adding that the bank is known to be "a very responsible company when it comes to student credit cards."
Among the benefits of working with MBNA, Gaudet said, is a series of financial education seminars that she hopes will run once a term and will probably "inform students about how to manage their credit."
Credit education is viewed as increasingly important by many school administrators, including Gaudet, who worry that students get into debt unknowingly, potentially harming their post-graduation credit ratings.
"Anytime you have established credit showing you can manage credit responsibly, that's a huge advantage for students," Gaudet said.
A recent survey commissioned by the National Consumers League found that more than half of teens may not fully understand how credit cards work, even though 58 percent plan to get one by the time they graduate from college.
As part of its contract with Dartmouth, the details of which are confidential, MBNA will give a small royalty fee to the College for each purchase made using an affinity credit card, Gaudet said.
In addition, MBNA contributed funds to the Hopkins Center, sponsored an intern in the Alumni Affairs office and agreed to provide five internships at MBNA to undergraduates or students at Tuck.
MBNA, which manages over $100 billion of credit according to its website, is the nation's largest affinity credit card provider, maintaining affinity credit cards for over 700 other schools and most major United States professional sports leagues, among others.
