It is now possible to pay library fines and fees from the comfort of your home or at Kitsap Regional Library’s self-check stations in all nine branch libraries.
Despite the best intentions, fines and fees are sometimes a fact of life. But until the last month, the only way to pay a KRL fine or fee was to bring cash or write a check at one of our library circulation desks.
One reason KRL changed to a new integrated library computer system this year was to allow for the payment of fines and fees by credit card. The system has now successfully implemented payment by credit card at our circulation desks, self-checkout stations and on the website (www.krl.org).
Other library systems that had previously enabled credit card payments for fines and fees have reported an increase in the collection rate on money owed. It will take a few months for KRL to determine whether this system will in fact boost collection of fines and fees.
But even if it does not, implementing collection of money by credit card offers other benefits to the library system.
For example, KRL has been working to increase the use of self-check at all of our libraries. But up until now, patrons who owed library fines would be directed from self-check to the circulation desks because they could not pay for their fines at the self-check stations. With this major impediment to the use of self-check stations out of the way, KRL hopes to raise the rate of self-check use by about 50 percent.
Modern libraries focus their customer service on helping patrons as they browse for materials, but that requires staff to be able to get out from behind circulation desks so they can provide assistance at the places in the library where patrons have questions. The more people who use self-check, the more KRL can deploy staff to help patrons throughout the library.
There is a cost to accepting payment by credit cards. For that reason, KRL has set $1 as the minimum transaction for which a credit card can be used. Credit card transactions using the KRL website are secure.
