For the first time this year, parents can pay for their students’ meals and activity fees online.

The option is being offered to make it easier to add money to accounts held with the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District.

“Many people prefer to use credit or debit cards to make purchases, rather than carrying cash or keeping track of a checkbook,” said school district spokesperson Pegge Erkeneff. “An online payment option is very convenient… and is trustworthy in that the person making the payment knows with certainty the payment has been made, and that a check or cash is not lost in transit to the school.”

All district schools offer electronic payments for meals, while six accept activity fees, Erkeneff said. The rest are individually implementing the service, she said.

The schools that don’t yet accept online payments for activity fees are in the process of making it an option, Erkeneff said. For meals, when a payment is made in the morning it is available for the student at lunchtime the same day, she said.

Everything went smoothly this spring when schools gave the new system a try for the first time, Erkeneff said. Kenai Central High School and Ninilchik School were the pilot schools for fee payments when they were offered for the first time in April, she said.

Parent requests have been the driving force behind expanding payment options, Erkeneff said. The school district’s finance and information technology departments collaborated to make online payments a possibility, she said.

There is a 3.61 percent processing fee calculated on all payments, Erkeneff said. The fee is from the company RevTrak, the program used to process the payments, and is not a source of revenue for the district, she said.

Payments can be made on the school district’s website through the Online Payments link in the Students-Parents tab, the online PowerSchool parent portal, and through the Online Payments icon on the school district’s mobile application, Erkeneff said.

Reach Kelly Sullivan at kelly.sullivan@peninsulaclarion.com