Cincinnati startups Abre and Pay Theory partner to transform education

Abre is a K–12 platform comprised of education and community apps that, when grouped, form solutions to streamline experiences for all stakeholders. For example, its Plans App allows schools to develop education plans for students and professional plans for teachers. Abre's new Payments App, powered by Pay Theory, will give families and partners a financially inclusive and secure payments experience that is fully integrated with student records and other district systems to increase automation and efficiency. Through this partnership, Abre is going to be able to offer school districts across the country the opportunity to give its families and partners a financially inclusive and secure payments experience.

The COVID–19 pandemic has laid bare the educational disparities and issues facing families from lower-income and underbanked backgrounds. With Abre and Pay Theory, schools and school districts have a simple solution with which to bring holistic inclusion to their families.

Eric Fulkert, Co-founder and CTO, Pay Theory: "Together we believe we are creating a better experience for all stakeholders. Abre and Pay Theory are poised to change how schools and families interact about money. Abre has a vision for changing how schools work, and we are excited to be part of that vision. Abre is in a unique position to change how schools manage parent relationships. Abre brings the ability to unify access to all the platforms in a school, as well as a CRM to help schools manage and nurture these connections. Our partnership with Abre will help schools increase financial inclusion through better communication about money, and ease of access for banked and unbanked families alike."

The Abre/Pay Theory partnership was a natural fit from the outset. Both fixtures of the Cincinnati startup scene, the two companies share a vision to improve education administration and accessibility for everyone.

The integrated platform will help families of K–12 students to facilitate education-related payments and other household management functions. Schools will see reduced funding gaps from unpaid fees. In all, Abre and Pay Theory's joint tools will create a digital educational administration ecosystem for all parties, bridging connections between schools, districts, and families.

James Stoffer, CEO, Abre: "We're excited to partner with Pay Theory as it helps us get even closer to delivering on our audacious goal of better supporting student success by removing fragmented experiences to all stakeholders in and out of school. Given Eric's deep experience, Pay Theory immediately earned our trust by proving the team gets the K–12 space. The various use cases Pay Theory is already supporting and other ones they are building are unique among payments solutions."

Using a credit/debit card, checking account details, or Pay Theory's digitized cash payment tool, families can access the Abre/Pay Theory platform to make school-related payments such as field trips, athletic participation, and tests such as the Advanced Placement exams safely and securely.

Families that prefer to make payments in cash can select that as an option in the platform during the checkout process. They will then receive a barcode in the Abre platform with encoded information unique to their transaction. They can then take that barcode to one of more than 65,000 retailers throughout the US, including Dollar General and Walgreens. After the cashier scans the code, the user can complete the transaction in cash. The Pay Theory platform executes the transaction immediately; with Abre recording receipt of payment for students and families.

School districts and families alike get the benefit of having accounts in one place. Abre also supports partners outside of school and, as such, will be able to facilitate payments and donations back into the district. The platform can help power and manage vital programs such as corporate matching, school fundraisers and carnivals, managing cash functions such as raffle tickets and silent auction bids.

Some school systems see as much as 30 percent of school fees going uncollected. By paving a way for the roughly one third of US families that are underbanked, school districts can help close this bookkeeping gap. Pay Theory's digitized cash payment tool means a safer, more secure school for teachers and students that comes with a cash-free campus, but with the financial inclusivity that comes with meeting everyone's needs. In addition, the Abre platform provides integrations with existing school management and accounting systems, creating a harmonized platform that benefits students, families, schools, and districts.

Fulkert, a 15-year-plus veteran of the EdTech industry, had known about and respected Abre as a K–12 administration platform, as well as has a strong working relationship with Chris Rose, its co-founder and chief technology officer. The timing of Pay Theory's minimum viable product completion along with Abre's onboarding earlier this year of Stoffer as its new CEO, who has more than 15 years in scaling EdTech companies in his own right, the timing for the integration was optimal.

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