Challenge

For 30 years, Commonwealth Savers has administered Virginia’s 529 education savings programs, growing them collectively into the largest in the US. Over those decades, the experience of contributing to a 529 plan hadn’t kept pace with the way people now expect to move money.

“Consumer expectations have shifted to quick, easy, and frictionless,” said Scott Ridgely, chief brand officer at Commonwealth Savers. “People don’t have time to get their checkbook out and find their routing number anymore. If that’s what we require for any contribution or gift, they’re going to find somebody else.”

The friction was especially clear when a grandparent or family friend wanted to contribute to a child’s or other individual’s account. They had to create their own user account and profile, and link and verify their bank information to give any amount of money. Commonwealth Savers knew this friction was limiting contribution volume.

Customer surveys told the same story. While existing account holders were comfortable with ACH and paper checks, many savers who were accustomed to mobile banking wanted digital payment options. To attract and keep the next generation of participants, Commonwealth Savers needed to deliver the experience of a modern fintech.

While Commonwealth Savers’ previous account contribution methods had supported its needs for many years, it wanted to enhance its platform to accommodate emerging payment methods, integrated fraud tools, and reporting. Rather than stitching together multiple point solutions, Commonwealth Savers wanted a single reliable, API-forward platform that could grow with the business well into the future.

“We wanted to make one good decision and then expand the partnership as the business and the needs of our customers grew,” Ridgely said.

Solution

In October 2025, Commonwealth Savers partnered with Accenture, a global professional services firm, to shape its payment strategy, define vendor requirements, and assist with the procurement process. Commonwealth Savers selected Stripe as its integrated payments partner based on Stripe’s APIs, reliability, and simple user experience. Accenture's role extended beyond vendor selection, continuing as an implementation and advisory partner alongside Stripe's professional services team through launch.

Commonwealth Savers built its new gifting experience on Stripe Payments, enabling gift purchases through credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay to give purchasers the same payment options they use in everyday transactions. In the first phase of implementation, an individual could purchase a digital gift card through Stripe Checkout. The account owner could then redeem that gift into an existing or new account using the card’s unique code.

Commonwealth Savers then enhanced its direct gifting flow. Account owners can share a unique code to their account with friends and family in a safe and secure manner. When gift purchasers enter that code at checkout, the Stripe-powered gift is routed directly into the appropriate 529 account—no redemption step required.

To support the expansion, Commonwealth Savers also added Stripe Radar, which uses AI trained on data from millions of businesses to detect and prevent fraud along with customer business rules, and Stripe Sigma, which provides data and reporting on how customers engage across the digital ecosystem.

From a technical standpoint, the implementation is a leap forward in how Commonwealth Savers moves money and manages complexity. Stripe’s API-first architecture, combined with Accenture’s deep payments expertise, allows for streamlined integrations that once required custom technical builds. The result is an ecosystem that is faster, more reliable, and far easier to evolve as new payment methods, security capabilities, and user expectations emerge.

Results

Streamlined checkout increases gift conversion by 65%

After supplementing the multistep gifting process with an optimized checkout, Commonwealth Savers increased its digital gift card purchase rate by 65% compared to the previous ACH-only flow.

Direct transactions now drive 96% of gifted contributions

With a dedicated gifting page and seamless online experience, the direct gift contribution flow now accounts for 96% of Commonwealth Savers’ gifting volume. Early customer surveys show that savers and purchasers find the process straightforward and would use it again.

“Our customers have told us the gifting experience is as simple as it could possibly be,” Ridgely said. “The response has been phenomenally positive.”

More contributors are joining the effort to save

By making gifting easier, Commonwealth Savers has increased access for education savings, with a 14.2% increase in gift volume. Parents can add a gift contribution link to their baby shower registry, share it on social media, or send it directly to relatives. Grandparents, extended family, and friends can make a meaningful gift in a few clicks. Commonwealth Savers anticipates even more growth with planned Stripe platform implementations.

“It’s not just one parent putting money aside a couple of times a year,” Ridgely said. “We’re expanding the audience of savers to a whole village of people contributing.”

Automatic prevention keeps fraud in check

Expanding access to digital payments for gifting contributions didn’t lead to more fraud. Radar automatically detects incidents such as card-testing attacks and abnormal transaction patterns. Commonwealth Savers’ teams no longer need to manually review bank verifications, which historically carries an industry average exception rate of approximately 20%. Moving to Stripe has significantly increased efficiency while keeping the checkout experience seamless for legitimate contributors.

Better reporting supports better decisions

Stripe Sigma gives Commonwealth Savers’ finance, operations, and compliance teams a clear view of card activity: who’s contributing, through which methods, and how that is shifting over time. Rather than waiting for manual reports, the team can track adoption in real time and spot trends as digital payments gradually increase.

Commonwealth Savers sets the pace for the 529 industry

The gifting platform is just the start. With Accenture and Stripe, Commonwealth Savers is already building the future of the 529 experience. The organization plans to enable one-time and recurring card and mobile wallet acceptance for regular customer contributions, potentially with Stripe Billing, and exploring how families could withdraw funds for credit to a preloaded debit card for qualified higher education expenses with Stripe Issuing. Longer-term, the team is exploring ideas such as converting unused credit card rewards into 529 contributions. Commonwealth Savers expects its impact to ripple across the broader $500+ billion 529 industry.

“We’re the biggest 529 plan in the country by far, and we want to make sure we are pushing the industry forward and not just accepting the way things have always been,” Ridgely said. “Our partnership with Stripe and Accenture puts us at the forefront of modernization, and we believe other state 529 plans will follow suit.”

About Accenture

Accenture is a solutions and services company that helps the world's leading enterprises reinvent through strategy, consulting, technology, and operations. With deep expertise in payments modernization and enterprise implementation, Accenture is a Stripe Specialized Services Partner with a track record of delivering Stripe solutions across retail, insurance, financial services, and the public sector.