“We started developing Benjamin over a year ago, and are incredibly excited to bring it to market,” said Greg Boggs, Co-Founder and EVP of Operations, University Fancards. “The inspiration came from insights we gathered from our collegiate and youth sports partnerships, and we reimagined how our existing products could be applied for organizations’ needs and built Benjamin to streamline and simplify payments.”
Benjamin was initially developed and tailored for sports organizations and other businesses with complex payments needs. Among the first clients to utilize the system was Pokes With a Purpose (PWAP), the official collective of Oklahoma State University Athletics. PWAP was founded in 2022 to support Cowboys student-athletes’ name, image and likeness endeavors.
Benjamin by Fancards (left) is the SaaS payments platform for several Collectives, including Pokes With a Purpose who distribute funds for Oklahoma State athletes to custom team-branded reloadable payment cards (right)
“We needed a secure way to pay our student-athletes that offered flexibility in how they use their earnings,” commented David Downing, Executive Director, Pokes With a Purpose. “We were paying athletes with checks before, but it was not efficient or ideal for the players. Fancards has added efficiency and convenience to how we send payments, but more importantly, how our players receive them.”
The SaaS payments platform is powered by Fancards’ prepaid reloadable Mastercard products and designed to save users time and money with a simple user interface. Benjamin’s host of features are customizable for many business use cases. Its features include bulk payments to optimize per diem programs at any scale, manage operational business expenses, pay 1099 labor and automated reporting to track payments.
“This is an important step in Fancards growth, and we have a lot to be enthusiastic about with Benjamin’s launch and our new business unit,” remarked Lynn Boggs, Co-Founder and CEO, University Fancards. “I have been around the payments industry for nearly four decades, so it was important to roll out a product that really thought through potential pain points with daily operational payments, and I believe we have a product that is going to benefit a lot of organizations.”
The launch is part of an internal restructuring that streamlines Fancards’ product lines. The newly formed Fancards Payments Solutions will house all B2B products, including the newly announced Benjamin, along with Bulk Gift Cards offerings that will provide custom gift cards to eight college football bowl games for the 2023-24 season. In addition, Fancards will provide custom gift cards for the College Football Playoff National Championship Game in January 2024. The company’s consumer products, the Fancards Prepaid Mastercard and Gift Mastercard programs will be verticals within Fancards Consumer Products.