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2/17/2006

"Can I pay for my library fines with my cell phone?"

Does this question sound ridiculous? We'll if the folks behind TextPayMe have any foresight, then the question is actually not too far off. The service, just announced as a Beta release (BTW: they're currently giving new users $5 to sign-up) allows users to "send and receive money with your phone via text messaging."

It will be interesting to see how fast this new service takes off. And, as cell phones get slimmer and slimmer to nearly the size of credit cards, I would venture a guess that these will soon be one and the same.

Anyway, it's always interesting to note that while we're still waiting for our ILS vendor to offer online payment of fines and fees (BTW: we're actually not waiting any more, but have rather have begun building our own interface between our catalog and VeriSign) the rest of the world is poised and ready for a new form of currency transfer.

Hmmm. I wonder if it will be as popular as PayPal? Which BTW, brings me to a question... How many of you have ever had a library user ask to pay for their fines & fees with PayPal? I'm just curious :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

No paypal requests, people do ask us if we have a wireless connection though.

Ed at MOR