What is smart parking payment?

By Frederic Bruneteau /

There have been many definitions to smart parking payment.

We define smart parking payment as a fully digital method that allows the driver to pay for a paid parking session, without needing to leave the vehicle.

Smart parking payment can be applied both on on-street parking and off-street parking facilities.

Although the first services were offered in vehicles, the recent and fastest growing version of smart parking has leveraged smartphone apps for payment. Dozens of players are active in this space including Be-Mobile, EasyPark, ElParking, Flowbird, Indigo Neo, Mobilet, Parkd, PayByPhone, Passport, SpotAngels, Telepass, Via Verde, etc.

These Parking Payment Providers (PPPs) play as intermediaries between the parking operators (incl. both cities and private operators) to collect fees from end users and transfer them to the relevant operator, taking a chunk of the fees. PPPs typically take a percentage of the fees. Sometimes they also charge a monthly subscription and / or a fixed fee per parking session.

The benefits for users are obvious:

  • They avoid the well known pitfalls of paying at a parking meter and
  • Make sure they are not fined by parking enforcement officers or automated parking enforcement vehicles, so-called “scan cars”.

Based on EPA and NPA information and its own market analysis, PTOLEMUS estimates the global market for smart parking at around €8 billion globally, growing at approx. 30% per annum. As show in the chart below, smart parking is still a tiny share of total parking payments transactions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The growth of smart parking solutions – be they provided by the smartphone or the vehicle – appears to be set to continue at a very fast pace, as parking facilities are increasingly digitalised and aggregated in the PPPs’ acceptance networks.

In our view, however, smartphone apps for parking are an intermediate step of the evolution towards fully Automated Parking payment.