From customer rewards points to bespoke payment apps and gamification, consumer brands have turned payments into a part of the customer brand experience.

At a recent immersive coding workshop, Terry College of Business students worked with Athens brands Jittery Joes, burton + BURTON, Your Pie, Golden Pantry and clothing store Kempt to help develop payment solutions contributing to their brand identities.

“I appreciate this opportunity for all of us to come together,” Terry College Management Information Systems department head and professor Jerry Kane said after the two-day sprint on Sept. 14. “I love the interactions with the local businesses. It’s an opportunity for the university to give back to our community, and I hope we continue to build on this … So, we can use this a model of education for not only the Terry College of Business but for the MIS department and beyond.”

The opportunity, hosted by Truist, brought together 45 Terry College students with developers from Truist, Amazon Web Services and IBM. It’s the second year Truist has partnered with Terry’s MIS department and FinTech programs to host the immersive learning experience. During the two-day experience, students worked with the professional developers and hospitality brand IHG to build payment systems for businesses around Athens.

This challenge was to create a payment system that allows customers to complete purchases seamlessly and build brand connections. Students were charged to incorporate how customers round up their totals and donate the difference to the Classic City Collective. The collective is a supporter-funded platform supporting University of Georgia student-athletes through NIL activities.

Kelly Buchanan, division chief information officer for Enterprise Payments & Wholesale Technology at Truist, challenged the students to think beyond the latest widgets and plug-ins when developing their solutions. She told them to focus on safety and stability.

“At the end of the day, I have a lot of non-negotiables for my team,” Buchanan said. “It’s about security — which we talked about — but also about stability … You have to think about it from the client’s standpoint. It can be easy to get caught up in a cool new technology. We call it ‘Tech for Tech’s sake.’ But you need to ask, what is it solving?”

After two days, the students used low-code platforms to develop solutions for each local business partner and presented them to the crowd.

For students, the two-day event offers an opportunity to perform under the stress of a professional setting, said Dylan Artis, a fourth-year MIS major who participated in the Truist immersive event for a second time.

“It gave us an opportunity to learn how to perform under stress in a professional setting,” Artis said. “It’s also a window into a different way of working inside a culture. I think a lot of MIS is focused on working as a consultant after graduation, and this gives you an idea of what it would be like to work inside a company.”

This fall’s immersive experience is part of a wide-ranging effort by Truist to prepare students for emerging jobs in financial technology. To learn more about how Truist is creating solutions for the future of banking, visit www.truist.com/innovation-technology-center. 

For more information about partnering with the UGA Terry College of Business Department of Management Information Systems, visit terry.uga.edu/MIS.