Unifying the District Experience

ClassDojo Partners with Pay Theory to Power the Future of School Operations

K12 education has struggled to keep up with the modernization of digital financial services. Most schools today still rely on outdated tools like paper forms and a myriad of disconnected third-party providers, creating unnecessary barriers and additional work for administrators, teachers, and families.

However, communications between teachers, administrators, and families have come a long way, with tools like ClassDojo tearing down old barriers. Now messages flow seamlessly between these players for the benefit of all. In fact, 89% of teachers say that ClassDojo improves relationships with families. Families are better able to participate in students’ education, leading to better outcomes. 

For ClassDojo, it was time to bring those two realities together in ClassDojo Payments. They needed a payments partner to help them realize that dream. 

The Power of a Unified System

ClassDojo connects with families in 95% of U.S. schools. By integrating Pay Theory, it builds on its outstanding communication experiences to tear down barriers between teacher and administrator requests and parents' payments, making transactions as seamless as asking about homework within the platform.

“Schools need payments that work for every family,” said Brad Hoeweler, CEO of Pay Theory. “That is why we’re so proud to partner with ClassDojo. Together, we’re bringing inclusive payments infrastructure to K–12 communities so districts spend less time on transactions and more time ensuring students have access to the experiences that help them excel.”

What changes operationally:

• Operational Unity: District leaders no longer have to manage separate vendors for messaging and payments. This reduces administrative silos and provides real-time visibility into payment status across every school.
• Real-Time Roster Updates: When a parent pays for a field trip or tech fee, the status updates on the teacher’s roster in real time. No more manual reconciliation or lost forms.
• Trusted Compliance: Secure money movement is backed by SOC 2 Type II and PCI Level 1 compliance, ensuring student and family data is protected within the existing school ecosystem.

Integrating payments into the channels where teachers and parents already connect simplifies school operations, reducing friction and allowing schools to focus on student experiences.

K12 Schools Have Unique Payment Needs

Payments embedded in SaaS solutions like ClassDojo must meet the unique needs of the vertical in which the SaaS platform operates. It’s that simple. SaaS platforms have to build on the RIGHT embedded payment and money movement infrastructure so that they can create value-added experiences for their customers (schools = merchants) and their payors (families, teachers, etc.).

Payments in EdTech have three fundamentally unique needs: 

1. Accepting EVERYTHING so you can accept EVERYONE. K12 school ecosystems cannot turn people away. So, they need to meet people where they are - whether they have a bank account or a payment card or they don’t, and they want to use cash. Nearly 30% of families in K12 U.S. public schools are either un or underbanked. School Districts are moving to cashless campuses, but if they don’t have a path to serve un and underbanked families, they risk leaving people behind.
2. School Onboarding to Payments HAS to be EASY. K12 school administrators are not payment experts day in and day out, and at the same time, setting up payments needs to be easy to participate in! We want them all using the platform as much as possible. It cannot be both difficult to use and effective. The difficulty will always outweigh the effectiveness.
3. K12 schools are ECOSYSTEMS. They have a lot of moving parts - multiple buildings and accounts, multiple payment creators, different kinds of payments from field trips to activity and club fees, to tech fees, to donations. Simple payments platforms cannot manage these ecosystem needs. If an athletic director wants to quickly set up a t-sale for a weekend event, that should NOT require them to use their personal Venmo to do it!

Designing embedded payments for these vertical-specific needs was the driver behind ClassDojo’s partnership with us. We had the same desire to build breakthrough K12 ecosystem financial experiences.

Payments Built for EdTech (...Must Pays)

Pay Theory’s platform was built to fulfill these operational needs so that more payments move onto the ClassDojo platform. The ClassDojo reach is unparalleled. We KNOW families will see the ClassDojo Payments product offering. Now we need to make it awesome. Here are just a few ways we are going to do this together!

1. Accept CASH DIGITALLY, while providing all the other payment acceptance methods people are used to, from all types of cards, to ACH (bank payments), payment wallets like ApplePay™, GooglePay™, and PAZE™. We want to make it so anyone can pay through ClassDojo, no matter their banking or card status.
2. Customize School’s digital merchant applications for easy completion. Pay Theory’s school-focused onboarding process eliminates all the inapplicable and confusing elements of a standard transaction processing merchant account application. This makes applications a snap, especially when working with the outstanding support team at ClassDojo.
3. Make managing payments easy for Districts - Pay Theory’s own merchant interfaces and GraphQL based API infrastructure make it easy to deliver beautiful, informative reporting that visualizes the key elements of payments for teachers, administrators, and families alike. Districts can see single buildings or roll up to a full District view!

These might seem like little things. But, as anyone who’s worked in K-12 school districts will tell you, the devil is in the details when it comes to change management. These little things add up to workflow simplification and higher adoption rates. All that means more payments flowing to the ClassDojo platform and more teachers, students, administrators, and families engaged in the payments experience. 

For Districts, that means more payments get seen, and more payments get made!

We are so proud to partner with ClassDojo in building out breakthrough financial experiences for K-12 School Districts. Welcome to Pay Theory. This is going to be awesome!

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