Higher One

July 19, 2002 - Washington, DC — Higher One, a leading provider of customized private label and one card banking solutions to higher education institutions, and Blackboard Inc., the leading software infrastructure company for e-Education, have signed a partnership agreement that will make the companies systems interoperable through Blackboards Building Blocks Program. Under the agreement, the two companies are developing an interface between the Higher One system and the Blackboard Transaction System that will enable their joint clients to utilize both systems seamlessly.

This new solution creates a simple one card solution for students, faculty and staff on campuses and allows them to extend the functionality and convenience of their student financial services, including checking and debit accounts to off-campus merchants. "We are pleased to be working with Blackboard to provide this value added service to the higher education market," said Walter Hinckfoot, National Sales Vice President of Higher One, Inc. "This partnership will greatly enhance the functionality of one card solutions for its users and provide universities with significant cost savings in areas such as financial disbursements. I look forward to speaking to all current Blackboard customer to explore our unique solution."

"The integration of the Higher One system with the Blackboard Transaction System will be a significant benefit to our higher education clients," said Jim Hermens, General Manager of Blackboard Transaction Systems. "We are very pleased to see Higher One join the increasing number of companies extending the functionality of the Blackboard platform and improving the range of services to all campus constituents."

About Blackboard Inc.
Blackboard Inc. was founded to transform the Internet into a powerful environment for education. The company offers a complete suite of enterprise software products and services that power a total e-Education Infrastructure for schools, colleges, universities and other education providers. Blackboard solutions deliver the promise of the Internet for online teaching and learning, campus communities, auxiliary services and integration of Web-enabled student services and back office systems. Blackboards Learning, Community Portal and Transaction Systems are consistently ranked by industry analysts as the market share and customer satisfaction leaders for thousands of academic institutions and a leading number of the Internets most popular consumer education sites. The company is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices and staff across North America, Europe and Asia. Visit www.blackboard.com for more information.

About Higher One

Founded in 2000, Higher One provides higher education institutions and their students with efficient, convenient and easy-to-use solutions to handle financial disbursements. These include: student refunds, on-campus and community purchases, payroll and employee expenses, as well as the collection of payments from students, parents, and sponsors.

Higher One offers a suite of online banking services including the OneAccount, an FDIC-insured checking account, and OneCard, a Debit MasterCard^®. To date, Higher One has disbursed over $4 billion dollars in refunds for its clients to more than 1,000,000 students, faculty, and staff at distinguished public and private higher education institutions throughout the country.

Higher One recently ranked # 85 on the 2007 Inc. List of the 500 Fastest Growing Companies in the United States. Higher One is based in New Haven, CT.