A new system of disbursing financial aid refund checks faster and more conveniently is coming to Wayne State.

Higher One, a company that works with more than 770 other higher education venues across the nation, will be partnering with WSU to offer students more options for how to receive their refund checks.

Half of all WSU students choose to receive their refund checks in the form of a paper check mailed to them, as opposed to a direct deposit into their bank account, said bursar Shelia Stewart of the Office of Student Accounts Receivable/Cashiers.

“Depending on when we first run checks at the beginning of the semester, we could generate 3,000 – 5,000 checks,” Stewart said.

“It’s a long, tedious process,” she said. “You have to put the check stock in, you (have to) move the check stock and put it into a folder sealer. Then it (has to) go through the mail.”

Aside from having the long process of creating the checks and sending them through the mail, when the listed addresses for students are incorrect or out of date, the checks are sent back to the university, Stewart said.

“It’s time-consuming for the university, and then it’s not a very efficient process,” she said. “We get quite a few checks that come back in the mail that say they’re undeliverable.”

She estimated that out of 5,000 checks sent, around 2 percent of them bounce back.

“Generally, it takes about a week for a check to come back in the mail to us, easily, and with a person waiting for that check the first week of school, that’s a big delay if you need to buy books,” Stewart said.

Through the partnership with Higher One, students will receive a card bearing the WSU logo in the mail and then choose one of three options to receive their refund check.

“The students can either elect to have that money go directly into a Higher One account or go to their direct deposit or, as a last resource, select a paper check,” Stewart said.

To choose their preference, students will need to activate their cards by going online to a website listed on the card and entering the code also written on the card.

Stewart said the office hopes to have the cards sent out by late October or November at the latest.

A Higher One OneAccount is a checking account in which students will be able to keep their refund money and spend it as they wish. Students who select this option can spend their money with a debit card that can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted.

When students sign for their purchases, like with a credit card instead of typing in their personal identification number, they’ll avoid fees and will be “covered under MasterCard zero-liability policy, which protects you from fraudulent transactions,” said Lauren Perry, Higher One campus relations coordinator.

Instead of having to wait for a check to arrive in the mail or to electronically deposit into a checking account, students who select the OneAccount option will have their money deposited in their account the same day that it is disbursed.

“To me, that’s the biggest benefit to it,” Stewart said.

She said four ATMs around campus will be available to allow students to withdraw funds from their OneAccounts.

Other benefits for students will include being able to use the OneAccount debit cards in campus dining halls and being able to transfer funds directly from one account to another.

Perry said that with a OneAccount, students can chose to have notifications sent to their phones when their money is deposited. Students can also send a text to find out their balance and set a low-balance alarm if they wish.

“I think a lot of students really enjoy having the mobile alerts because students always look at their phones. They’re not necessarily always checking their email or reading things that come in the mail, but a phone, to a college student, is something they have all the time,” she said.

With a OneAccount, students are also able to pay their bills online for free.

Mazharul Chowdhury, a pre-med student in his third semester at WSU, said it usually takes him about three or four days to receive his money via direct deposit.

He said that on one occasion when he had his refund check mailed to his house, he didn’t actually receive the money until much later.

“It took me almost three weeks. They didn’t give it to me until I called them,” he said.

Marcos Yassa, a pre-nursing student also in his third semester, has his refund check mailed to him each semester. He used Higher One during a summer class at Macomb Community College.

“I think it’ll make it much easier because it takes forever to…start printing papers and checks,” he said.

Sarah Vickers, a WSU student majoring in psychology, said it normally takes her anywhere between two weeks and a month to receive her refund check, part of which she attributes to living in a small town about an hour away from Detroit.

“It’ll be a lot easier to digitize it because I do wait so long for it to get in the mail,” she said. “That sounds really smart. Yeah, that sounds like something I’d be interested in, for sure.”