Unlike the vapid offerings of a bank, QPay is hitting students where it really counts – cheap tacos.
Although formerly known as a start-up, today that label is selling QPay short. With 150,000 students signed up to the payments platform nationally and 200 plus societies further afield, their strongest presence is right here in Canberra, with an impressive 86 per cent of ANU using QPay.
“QPay started off about 3 years ago as a student marketplace,” said Ahmed Elshearif, Head of Growth. “QPay gives societies the ability to do a lot more, we have helped with ticketing events – everything from law balls to pub crawls – as well as facilitating membership sign ups from O- Week, buying merchandise and assisting to on sell. The platform is a hub to buy and sell everything students need essentially.”
Processing more than $11 million for merchandise, tickets, gowns and textbooks, QPay fills a clear void in the market, as well as holding students accountable for paying back their peers who foot the snack bill during a late-night study cram.
It was their splitting payments system which bridged the gap between societies and peers and minimised the inconvenience of splitting bills between friends which helped QPay gain their resilient following.
Ahmed said their considerable growth lends itself to QPay’s intricate understanding of student spending.
“We were all students, everyone at QPay understands what they want and what they aren’t being provided with,” he said. “There are so many retailers around campus and we thought, why not provide deals to students from those places automatically?”
Enter QPay Swipe: a progressive way of banking that takes the edge off checking your account. Instead of being disappointed by your bleak balance, students may well have a pending deal to help them save a buck or two.
And here is where it gets good.
“We are offering deals such as three months off your Netflix subscription, discounts at Coles and Guzman Y Gomez, $5 off Murray’s bus trips to Sydney; we have had $25 off H&M, $4 off ANU parking; we even did one to coincide with the launch of Supa Bowl specifically because it’s near ANU.”
But that’s not even half the fun. QPay Flash Sales offer student’s promos like ‘free cappuccino at Coffee Lab for the next hour’ a rush probably worth missing your lecture for.
The best part is, staff are none the wiser, and you won’t need to stockpile bulk loyalty cards or coupons to cash in on the deals. The QPay MasterCard means savings occur automatically, with students being reimbursed within 30 minutes of purchase.
QPay Swipe is currently only being offered to ANU students in a small test group before being rolled out across the campus and then nationally. Canberra will be first city provided with this premium University experience to make campus life more manageable.
“We started at ANU, it was our first University, so we wanted to roll out QPay Swipe on our home turf. The first stage is trialling 500 cards which has now exploded to a list of over nine thousand students waiting to get their hands on a card.”
ANU is at the forefront of tertiary education, ranked first in Australia and in the top 20 globally, but tell a student they will also be getting a cheap chai latte and watch them flock to the Capital.
“Students are usually strapped for cash, they are always looking for a deal, a discount or a way to save a bit of coin, and with the introduction of QPay Swipe it has allowed students to have more accessible income,” Ahmed said.
