If your university has received an ACH deposit or a remittance notification email from Backpack, it means one of your scholarship providers uses Backpack to disburse scholarship funds directly to universities on behalf of their recipients.
What is Backpack?
Backpack is a banking and payments platform used by scholarship providers, foundations, universities and other organizations to send scholarship funds directly to university bursar and financial aid offices via ACH.
Backpack is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by OMB Bank, Member FDIC.
Why did I receive an email from [email protected]?
When a scholarship provider initiates a payment to your institution, Backpack automatically sends a remittance notification to the contact emails on file for your university. That email includes a link to view payment and student details, and a downloadable CSV for posting to student accounts. The notification arrives before the funds land in your account.
Does Backpack cover all of our university's scholarship payments?
Backpack only processes payments on behalf of the scholarship providers who are active on our platform. If you are receiving a payment through Backpack, it means that specific provider uses Backpack as their banking and payments platform — but other providers your university works with may not.
Universities can partner with Backpack to receive all scholarship payments via ACH. Backpack is used by universities to receive external payments electronically, including 529 and third-party / sponsored payments, eliminating paper checks across the board. If you are interested in consolidating all outside scholarship payments, reach out at [email protected] or visit backpackpay.com.
Need to verify a payment or provider?
Email us at [email protected] and include the Payment ID from your notification email. We can confirm the provider, payment amount, and expected arrival date.