Smarter parking payment

Managing parking payments with smarter solutions

As we move toward a cashless society, with ‘traditional’ credit and debit cards now being joined by contactless and smartphone payments, the right software will enable parking operators to manage them all – and it can even help with smarter occupancy and enforcement

Words | Paul Fratila and Tilo Krebs, Hectronic, Germany

We live in the midst of the digital revolution, with new transportation technologies such as autonomous vehicles often grabbing the headlines.

But while fully self-driving vehicles are still some years off, new technology for transforming on- and off-street parking is available today. Cities now often rely on these new technologies, which promise to increase convenience for drivers. Certainly the income from, and expense of, parking must always be optimized. Hectronic, an established company in the field of on-street parking, already offers services that provide drivers with greater comfort, as well as improving the efficiency of cities, municipalities and new stakeholders, such as the automotive industry. Hectronic offers intelligent, integrated and centralized solutions.

Cashless society

Cash is losing its importance as a payment method. Bank notes are used more rarely and even some vending machines now operate on a card-only basis. Contactless payment methods are rapidly increasing and are already well accepted for small-value payments. Today’s technology enables card-payment receipts to be managed in the cloud. If a receipt is required, it can be sent via email or SMS to the user or could even be picked up on a web-based service.

As a consequence of this cashless revolution, parking machines can now be constructed without coin and note acceptors. A printer is no longer needed as tickets are now only one of several options for parking enforcement. Stronger connections to back-office systems are therefore essential, to enable full control by traffic wardens of the actual parking situation.

Today, usability plays an important role in our lives. Smartphones are becoming more intelligent, enabling processes to be automated, customized and quick. So the form factor and user friendliness of parking machines must adapt to new behavior.

In addition to the above payment solutions, payments via smartphone are increasingly accepted by users. Parking