Single mother Rebecca Wood, 45, was already dealing with high medical bills in 2020 when she noticed she was being charged a $2.49 “program fee” each time she loaded money onto her daughter’s school lunch account.
As more schools turn to cashless payment systems, more districts have contracted with processing companies that charge as much as $3.25 or 4% to 5% per transaction, according to a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The report found that though legally schools must offer a fee-free option to pay by cash or check, there’s rarely transparency around it.
“It wouldn’t have been a big deal if I had hundreds of dollars to dump into her account at the beginning of the year,” Wood said. “I didn’t. I was paying as I went, which meant I was paying a fee every time. The $2.50 transaction fee was the price of a lunch. So I’d pay for six lunches, but only get five.”
This sounds like the schools don’t handle the payments for lunches. A third party does and as an electronic payment processor, they probably don’t provide a physical address where a check can be received.
The schools by law have to accept payment. The physical address is the school building, ATTN: Lunch Program.
Someone will contact you if the address needs to be corrected and also informing you there is now a convenient online option….
Edit: it’s also in the article that the USDA requires fee-free options to be provided