Harvard Students Will Switch to New Payment Systems for Laundry, Printing With End of Crimson Cash in Sight

As Harvard phases out Crimson Cash, students will need to use new online payment portals for laundry, printing, and student grilles starting by June 30, when the program will be fully retired.

Students could previously use Crimson Cash — a system that allows students to link their Harvard IDs to declining balance accounts — to pay for all three services. Now, students will instead use apps that link directly to their credit or debit cards, according to the Crimson Cash website, which was recently updated with the details of Harvard’s planned payment mechanism.

“Going forward, laundry, copy/print and Student Grilles will all have new payment gateways that offer more payment choices and convenience for users,” the Crimson Cash website reads.

Harvard first announced plans in June 2024 to phase out Crimson Cash, citing decreased usage of the program as the basis for its dissolution. The retirement was divided into three stages: off-campus merchants stopped accepting Crimson Cash last summer, and Harvard University Dining Services retail locations stopped accepting Crimson Cash as payment at the end of the fall 2024 term.

Now, in the transition’s final phase, laundry machine payment will move to the CSCPayMobile App, a platform that offers several laundry management tools, including machine availability and laundry cycle status. The switch to payment on the app will begin the week of June 2, according to the Crimson Cash website.

With the CSCPayMobile App, students will have the ability to load funds onto the app without any need to swipe their ID, according to Harvard Campus Services spokesperson Michael Conner.

“This will be a significant improvement to user convenience accepting all major credit cards as well as Apple Pay and Google Pay,” the Crimson Cash website reads.

But students will no longer be able to pay for laundry outside the app: the machines will accept neither Crimson Cash or quarters.

Printing services, as well as Student Grilles, will transition to Touchnet, a “separate university-approved payment method that supports a number of Harvard applications and services,” according to Conner.

According to the Crimson Cash website, Touchnet also “accepts all major credit cards.”

Despite the transition from Crimson Cash to Touchnet, Student Grilles will continue to accept BoardPlus, the $65 credit loaded on students’ IDs every semester.

“There are currently no plans to phase-out the BoardPlus program,” Conner wrote.

Students can use remaining Crimson Cash funds until the end of June and can request refunds until June 30, 2026.

—Staff writer Hiral M. Chavre can be reached at hiral.chavre@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Darcy G Lin can be reached at darcy.lin@thecrimson.com.