Credit Card Processor Sends Fees to School Districts

 In and around North Texas, federal and state cuts to the education budget have left hard choices.

“We end up hiring more teachers to educate our kids, but we have fewer resources in our classrooms,” said Jason Smith, Melissa Superintendent.

Now, credit card processing company School Spirit Pays is creating a bridge between the private sector and public education.

“The needs schools have now are greater than ever,” said founder and president Denise Senter.

Senter explains that with every purchase, banks, credit card companies and credit card processors take a cut of a fee businesses pay to use the service.

Within that fee, a portion is left over to compensate a marketing company, which recruits businesses.

However, School Spirit Pays replaces those commission-based sales people with volunteers from, for example, local PTAs, allowing them to redirect that small portion of the purchase amount to a local school district or education foundation.

It’s something Senter says costs the participating business nothing – because they’re already paying the credit card service fee.

“Instead volunteers go and say, 'we’re partnering with School Spirit Pays, we want you to do your credit card processing with them, they will pay a percentage of your processing fee to our organization,'” she said.

In McKinney, Michael Oliver and his wife have signed on with School Spirit Pays and say they’ve only seen involvement grow.

“With us being a local business that is directly related to a lot of the schools and PTAs, it’s something that’s helped us and we really think it will really help others,” Oliver said.

On average, the merchant contribution comes out to about $25 per month.

“It adds up and it adds up quickly,” said Senter.

In the meantime, School Spirit Pays is looking to expand to other districts and say they’re in talks with several in North Texas.

They are also in the process of recruiting more business involvement.