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Last month Lansing added credit card payments to its options for paying for licenses, fees and taxes.  Town Clerk Deborah Munson says people have quickly embraced the option, paying for DEC licenses, dog licenses, and a marriage license. 

"I am really excited about this credit card thing," she says.  "We started taking them the day after the last Town Board meeting.  We’ve done a credit card transaction pretty much every day since then.  I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but we never took credit cards before.  People don’t seem to mind paying the small convenience fee.  Today we’ve taken two of them."

The Clerk's office started last month with licenses, and will be adding water and sewer payments within a week or so.  Munson says she will be ready to accept property tax credit card payments when the time comes.

“We’re going to do that, too,” she says.  “We’re pretty well set up for that already, but we never implemented the final step.  We’ll be doing that in January as well.”



Munson told the Lansing Town Board she would be accepting credit card payments at their August 17th meeting.  The next day her office took its first credit card payment, and the Town has received at least one per day since them.  She had planned to wait to add a card swiping device, but with an enthusiastic response she ended up purchasing one sooner, and it was in service starting last week.

"Someone sent in a check that they forgot to sign," she says.  "The options were that we could send the check back to them, they could stop in the Clerk’s office, or… I said, ‘We take credit cards now.  Would you like me to run your information?  There will be an extra charge of $1.75.’  They said, ‘Fine, that is really what works for me.’"

The $1.75 'convenience fee' is applied to charges under $64.  For higher amounts there is a 2.75% charge.  Online payments have not been implemented yet, but will be available soon for water and sewer payments.

"They’ll be able to come here and pay by credit card," Munson says.  "But they will also be able to do it right from home on our Web site.  They’ll be able to log in and pay with an e-check or credit card.  I hope to have that running in a week or two.  I’m very excited about it.  The response has been very positive so far."

Not everything will be payable on the Web site — you have to come into the Clerk’s office to get dog, DEC and marriage licenses.  Water and sewer will soon be added to the Town Web site, and Munson said she was unsure whether it would be possible to accept online payments for property taxes.

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