In response to financial unsustainability, growing security obligations and low merchant satisfaction, Stanford University undertook a multi-year transformation of its merchant services program. The result was UniRev©, an integrated payment platform that streamlined payment acceptance, reduced administrative burden and positioned the program for growth.

The AFP Treasury Case Study series is designed to help you build up key treasury capabilities and skills by sharing examples of how leading practitioners have tackled challenges in their work and the lessons learned.

This case study is based on Stanford University’s Pinnacle Award entry. Stanford University was the winner of the AFP 2025 Pinnacle Award Grand Prize.

Insight: Successful payments modernization requires stakeholder buy-in, clear delegation of responsibilities, a deep understanding of merchant needs and technological infrastructure that can support those needs.

Background

Stanford University supports a complex network of 17,000 students, 20,000 faculty and staff, and nearly $19 billion in annual revenue and expenses. Payment acceptance touches nearly every corner of the institution, from athletic ticket sales and conference registrations to donations, executive education programs and journal subscriptions.

Challenge

By 2017, Stanford’s merchant services environment was straining under its own complexity. More than 170 merchants operated across the university using a wide variety of front-end systems. The program had evolved primarily around PCI compliance requirements, layering in manual processes and technical workarounds as the network grew.

Annual costs were escalating, approximately 10 full-time employees across central Finance, IT and InfoSec supported the program, and merchants were increasingly frustrated by the lack of modern payment options and operational flexibility.

“Our mantra in treasury from the outset, and this really has been our North Star, is that we should be an enabler, not an administrative bottleneck,” said Karen Kearney, Treasurer at Stanford University. “We wanted to reposition the program from a compliance-centric focus to a much more customer-oriented approach.”

Approach

Although Stanford recognized the need for change, the transformation required significant institutional support. Treasury leaders needed to demonstrate that the existing model was financially unsustainable while gaining buy-in from stakeholders across treasury, IT, information security, and university departments.

“This had to be ‘everybody wins’ because if they were going to come on board, it had to improve life for everyone,” said Rich Boltizar, Founder and CEO of UniRev.

In the first phase of their approach, the team launched a comprehensive discovery process. The team conducted internal surveys and interviews with more than 100 departments to understand merchant needs, identify pain points, and evaluate opportunities for improvement.

“We needed to understand who our merchants were. We needed to understand what their gaps were, what was working for them, what wasn't working for them, what their needs were,” said Lori Snow, Assistant Treasurer, Cash Management & Operations, Stanford University. “We needed to really reach out to them and, more importantly, we needed to let them know that we wanted to communicate with them, that they were the focus of the program, that this was not a PCI compliance program, this was a revenue collection program and that we were going to recenter that as the focus of our mission.”

The effort revealed widespread frustration with existing processes and a strong desire for greater flexibility and modern payment capabilities.

The second phase turned outward. Stanford issued an RFP for a new payment gateway, ultimately selecting a direct relationship with Cybersource, adding Stripe as one of its gateways, and implementing payment technologies that reduced PCI scope, laying the foundation for broader transformation.

The third phase was focused on implementation and moving merchants from the legacy ecosystem to the new infrastructure.

Overall, the project unfolded over approximately seven years in three phases.  Phase 3, outlined below, accounted for the project’s last two and a half years.

1. Stanford redefined governance and responsibilities across treasury, IT and information security. PCI compliance oversight was moved into the information security organization, while treasury strengthened engagement with merchants through newsletters, communities of practice and ongoing collaboration. The university also established a new RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) framework to clarify ownership and accountability across the program.
2. Stanford replaced legacy gateway technology with modern infrastructure supporting emerging payment methods and point-to-point encryption, thereby expanding what merchants could offer while strengthening security.
3. The university developed UniRev, a platform designed to connect payment processing, merchant operations and financial systems into a single integrated ecosystem. Built on Stripe as the processing back-end, UniRev enables Stanford to support hundreds of merchants while maintaining centralized oversight, straight-through processing and automated financial controls.

UniRev serves as middleware between payment processors and Stanford’s ERP environment, automating processes that previously required extensive manual effort. The platform supports multiple payment channels, integrates with third-party applications, automates reconciliation and provides centralized reporting across the institution.

The solution tracks transactions throughout the payment lifecycle, from initiation through settlement, and automatically generates the accounting entries required for posting to the general ledger. By embedding PCI-compliant controls into the platform architecture, Stanford also significantly reduced its compliance burden while eliminating the need for a dedicated PCI network.

Outcome

Today, approximately 60% of Stanford’s merchants are operating on CardinalPay using Stripe, Stanford’s branded implementation of UniRev. The platform supports more than 227 merchants and enables a much simpler onboarding and management experience.

The university estimates that the transformation has generated:

• More than 5,500 hours of annual time savings across university departments
• More than 4,000 hours of annual savings within treasury operations
• Approximately $1.3 million in ongoing annual value through process efficiencies
• Elimination of the legacy PCI network and a significant reduction of PCI compliance requirements
• A reduction in program staffing from approximately 10 FTEs to 5 FTEs, with improved service levels and functionality

Additionally, the transformation positioned Stanford to meet evolving customer payment expectations while giving treasury the visibility, reporting, and operational control the program had long needed.