Digital Library Cards & Patron Passes
Issue library cards to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet from the patron record you already keep — with holds, due dates and branch news arriving on the lock screen instead of in an email nobody opens.
Try on AppExchangeWhat libraries use Kemicard for
Patron cards
The borrower barcode your circulation desk already scans, delivered to the phone the patron never leaves home without — with account status that reflects the record rather than the day it was printed.
Holds & due dates
A hold arriving or a loan coming due is a push notification, not a hope that the patron checks email. Fewer overdue items, fewer blocked accounts, fewer conversations at the desk about fines.
Programmes & events
Summer reading, author talks, story time, maker-space bookings. Ticket the ones that need capacity, and reach every card holder about the ones that do not.
The Card Stops Being a Consumable
A library card is the cheapest thing in the building and one of the most expensive to keep replacing. Card stock, printers, ribbons, and a staff member's time at the desk every time one is lost — all of it recurring, all of it scaling with membership.
- Replacement costs go to nearly nothing. A lost pass is a resent link. There is no queue, no fee to collect, no plastic to order.
- Registration finishes online. A patron signs up from home and has their card before they arrive, which is the difference between an intention and a member.
- Plastic leaves the budget. PVC cards do not recycle. Fewer of them is a visible commitment your board can point at.
- Lapsed patrons are reachable. Someone who has not borrowed in six months still carries the card. That is a channel most library systems do not currently have.
Keep printing plastic for the patrons who need it. The barcode is the same, so the scanner does not care which one arrives at the desk.
Your Existing Scanners Almost Certainly Work
This is the question every IT department asks first, and the answer is usually reassuring. Image-based scanners — the CCD and 2D readers most circulation desks already run — read a barcode off a phone screen without any change at all.
The exception is older laser scanners, which struggle with the reflection off glass. That is a desk-level hardware swap at a modest cost, not a system replacement, and it is worth testing at every desk during a pilot rather than discovering it on launch day.
Self-service kiosks and RFID gates are the other thing to check early. Some read screens, some do not, and knowing which before you announce the programme saves a great deal of explaining afterwards.
Patron Privacy Is the Whole Profession
Libraries hold reading records, and the profession has defended the confidentiality of those records for a century. A digital card has to respect that or it should not exist.
- The pass carries the barcode, not the borrowing history. What a card showed is what the pass shows. Circulation data stays in the system of record.
- Notifications are opt-in per patron and revocable from the pass itself, without a conversation at the desk.
- The credential sits behind the device lock. A dropped plastic card works for whoever picks it up; a locked phone does not.
- Nothing is shared with a third party to make the pass work. Kemicard runs inside your Salesforce org.
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The Back of the Card: What the Desk Answers All Day
Opening hours, the catalogue link, the renewals line and the borrowing limits — on the card every patron already carries.
Every row is a back-of-pass field mapped to Salesforce. Change the holiday hours once and every patron's card reflects it, without a notice on the door or an email nobody opens.
Libraries, in practice
Most library systems already hold everything a wallet pass needs: a patron name, a borrower number, a home branch, an expiry date and a status. The card has historically been a printed snapshot of that record, accurate on the day it was issued and drifting thereafter. Issuing from the record instead removes the drift — a renewed membership, a changed branch or a lifted block is reflected on the pass without anyone reprinting anything.
The engagement side is what tends to surprise library boards. A physical card is silent by design; it sits in a wallet and waits to be used. A pass is addressable. Holds and due dates are the obvious first messages because they reduce work at the desk and fines on the account, but the more valuable ones are the programme announcements — summer reading, digital literacy classes, tax help sessions — reaching every card holder rather than only the fraction on the newsletter list. For a public institution measured on reach, that difference matters more than the printing saved.
Academic libraries usually arrive here from a different direction: the library card is one facet of a campus credential rather than a card of its own. Kemicard handles both patterns from the same template model, so a university can issue a single student pass that opens the library alongside everything else. See education for the campus-wide picture.
Rolling out is best done narrowly first. Staff, then volunteers, then your most frequent borrowers — enough people to prove the scanners, the sign-up flow and the notification cadence before the programme is announced to the whole community.
Libraries — the brochure
A one-page summary for a conference table or an email, or the six-page version for the colleague who has to approve it. Both cover what you can issue, how it works, and the push and back-of-card examples for libraries.
Further reading
From the blog
Put the Library Card in the Wallet
See patron cards, holds and programme messaging on your own data.