PayByPhone, an international provider of
systems for parking and urban mobility payments, announced one of the largest
deployments of near field communications (NFC) payment solutions in the world.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation
Agency (SFMTA), which selected the PayByPhone mobile payment system for
parking, is currently adding NFC-enabled stickers to the city’s 30,800 parking
spaces to give drivers the option to pay for parking with NFC-enabled mobile
phones in addition to mobile apps and mobile web for regular phones. All
parking meters continue to accept payment with coins.
The PayByPhone system, already deployed in
the Castro district will be extended citywide as installation of the stickers
is completed. The PayByPhone NFC sticker has a passive electronic chip that
does not require a battery and stores information such as the parking space
number that can be read wirelessly by any NFC-enabled phone.
Since each meter in San Francisco will have
a PayByPhone sticker, users can wave or tap their NFC-enabled phones over the
NFC sticker on the meter to automatically launch the parking application. The
mobile payment system recognizes the user, identifies the individual parking
location, and the driver enters the desired parking time to complete the
transaction.
The system then sends a text message
reminder before the parking period expires, and if needed, allows additional
time to be purchased by phone from any location. A receipt is automatically
sent to the user’s email account. Payment is processed against a credit or
debit card associated with the mobile phone number.
“This is one of the largest deployments of
NFC technology in the United States and shows the practical benefits this
technology can deliver in terms of ease of use and convenience. There has been
a lot of hype around NFC recently and PayByPhone is pleased to now put the
technology in the field for real world applications,” said Neil Podmore, VP of
Business Development at PayByPhone.
The installation of mobile electronic
payment systems is already catching the imagination of cities and towns around
the world. With a proven role of providing parking authorities with efficient,
easier-to-manage and cost effective solutions also comes real-time data to fine
tune parking policies and provide parking guidance systems.
Analyst firm Juniper Research predicted
that consumers around the world could generate as much as $50 billion in sales
through NFC-based mobile payments by 2014. The potential for this nascent
technology is huge.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
