The cat’s out of the bag — UK Plus will be renamed CatCash this upcoming October.
UK Plus is available to UK faculty, staff and students and serves as a debit card program connected to UK IDs, according to the UK Plus Account website.
“The Plus Account is widely used on campus and off campus for food, bookstores, printing, copying, prescriptions, and much more,” the website said.
While still maintaining these features, UK Plus is set to undergo several changes in addition to being renamed “CatCash.”
CatCash will be partnering with GrubHub to allow coverage of all off-campus purchases as well as anywhere on campus.
“Any existing vendors with GrubHub, you’ll be able to use CatCash to pay for those services,” said Cassie Marriott, Associate Director of Auxiliary HR and Campus Hospitality.
Auxiliary Services is also planning to partner with local restaurants to encourage the use of CatCash and the rebranding of the program.
The program will also extend outside of UK, and CatCash will be available for students to use nationwide.
“If you use CatCash through GrubHub, you can use it anywhere where GrubHub is a service. Not just in Lexington, but if a student is traveling for any reason in America they can still use CatCash with GrubHub,” said Andrew Smith, Assistant Vice President for Auxiliary Services.
The funds in the account do not expire and will still be available upon graduation from the university.
The program is set for a mid-October rollout and is in the final stages of event planning, Marriott added.
“I think the branding of Plus has run its course, and we needed to rethink how we were going to communicate the program,” Smith said.
The decision to change the name of the program was made after Marriott noticed confusion between UK Flex Dollars and UK Plus among UK students.
“Over the last couple of years in our focus groups talking to students about dining options on campus, it’s come to our attention that there’s a lot of confusion around Flex dollars and the Plus account,” Marriott said.
UK Flex has a few key differences from UK Plus.
UK Flex is included specifically in meal plans and is available for use in on-campus dining locations, whereas UK Plus can be used off-campus.
“Our hopes with rebranding it are to showcase the differences between and highlight that it (UK Plus) is for off-campus usage,” Marriott said.
Future information about the rollout of CatCash can be found on the UK Auxiliary Services website.
