Higher One - Students and Client Universities Give High Marks to Higher One

Higher One Client Extends its Disbursement, Banking and Debit Card Services Program through September 2007

NEW HAVEN, CT, April 20, 2005 - Higher One, a leading provider of customized financial services dedicated exclusively to the higher education market, today announced the University of Wisconsin-Stout has renewed its contract through September 2007. UW-Stout was the first University to ever win the prestigious Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award and the first to fully implement Higher One's OneDisburse^® ID Refund Management. The University signed with Higher One in September 2002 to begin providing the OneDisburse^® ID program through the Stout OneCard. The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and University of Wisconsin-Parkside have also implemented Higher One financial service programs within the last two years.

"We are very proud that UW-Stout has signed on to continue our successful partnership," said Dean Hatton, President and CEO of Higher One. "This extension - the maximum allowed by the RFP- clearly demonstrates the successful results in cost savings and incremental services to students we have helped the University achieve over the past two years."

Originally, UW-Stout was looking to reduce cost and improve service in their financial aid disbursement process, provide new services to students, and update the functionality and services they could offer through their campus ID cards. The Stout OneCard enables students and employees to choose any of three options to receive financial aid and other refunds, and easily sign up for payroll direct deposit online. With money in a OneAccount, the Stout OneCard also serves as a debit MasterCard® Card accepted at millions of merchants worldwide, including those on campus.

"The Higher One program has been, and will continue to be a great benefit for the University and our students," said Joe Krier, Director of Student Services, UW-Stout. "From the University's perspective, the decision was simple; Higher One has delivered a program that leverages our existing card system infrastructure, shortens lines, created many new efficiencies, saved us time and money, and ultimately has resulted in satisfied students and parents."

Over the course of the first two years of its relationship with UW-Stout, Higher One has eliminated the costs involved with 22,000 disbursements by the University by handling all payments, customer service, preference tracking and reconciliation associated with the disbursement of refunds. Studies have shown that for many schools who manage financial aid disbursement themselves, these costs can run as high as $35 per disbursement. Prior to Higher One, Stout estimates their costs were $20 per disbursement.

Higher One's OneDisburse^® is the only comprehensive Refund Management 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 college. Regardless of the student preference, Higher One handles the delivery of the refund - - the university only needs to send Higher One a file that includes the identifier for the student and the amount of the payment, and a wire transfer for the total amount of the disbursements.

Because Higher One handles everything related to the disbursement, including any refund payment errors, the university only needs to support one payment process and reconcile each wire transfer (instead of each individual payment). OneDisburse^® enables institutions to offer more student choice, free-up staff time, reduce costs, remain compliant with the 14 day rule, avoid storing bank account information or handling paper checks (vastly reducing fraud risk) and, because the college does not create a commercial banking relationship with Higher One (Higher One never holds state funds), setup is simplified dramatically.

Higher One's OneDisburse^® Refund Management disbursement service 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. OneFinanceSM is a suite of financial services including the OneAccount free checking account, the OneCard, and the OneRewards program that earns points for purchases at participating local merchants. Higher One currently serves 21 public and private university and college clients and has helped them disburse over half a billion dollars through more than 340,000 individual payments since September 2002.

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.