Pay

Libraries, universities and schools face the challenge of providing cost-efficient print and copy facilities to students and visitors. Often free printing services are unintentionally misused simply because people do not consider the print costs and wastage.

SafeCom Pay is a cost-efficient solution for educational institutions, libraries, and places with public access to printing and copying. The solution provides a user-friendly method of payment that is easy to implement and use.

How does it work?

SafeCom Pay makes it possible to charge students and other users before they can print and copy. Payment comes from student accounts and each student has his or her own personal account where they deposit money when needed. Administrative staff can also deposit money into student accounts via the SafeCom Cashier program.

SafeCom Pay builds on data collected with SafeCom Tracking so a SafeCom Pay license must always be accompanied by a Tracking license.

SafeCom Pay can run in Push Print environments. However we recommend that SafeCom Pay is combined with Pull Print for a more user friendly scenario. Read the details here about these two scenarios here.

Students can log in using their student ID card or student number. If a user logs in without any credit in his account, he is simply not allowed to print or copy.

Full or partial cost recovery

SafeCom Pay can be used by both staff and students. Staff's print activity is unlimited, but tracked data can be used for subsequent departmental invoicing. Students' print activity can be subject to various pay-for-print policies such as:
* Full cost recovery: Students pay for all printouts and copies.
* Partial cost recovery: Students are given a fixed number of credits per month/semester/year but must pay for additional prints.
* Quota control: Students are assigned fixed quotas. This is popular when pay-for-print printing is not allowed.

The next step?

Why not offer students around the clock self service? To achieve this, we suggest letting students deposit money in their own accounts by depositing cash in the SafeCom Money Loader or via the Internet using SafeCom ePay. The SafeCom Web Interface allows students to see their current balance and the transactions on their SafeCom account in a Web browser.

With SafeCom you only need one print management system to cover all campuses and libraries. With a multi-server installation, students and teachers can roam between campuses in different geographical locations and print wherever they are.