Are “mobile phone” parking payments ahead of their time?

John Regan over at Parcxmart sent me this article which basically says that the concept of making financial transactions using your cell phone was ahead of its time. — I would tend to agree.  The focus of this study, is, of course, major transactions like paying bills, buying clothes, and the like. John moves it into the realm of pay by cell phone for parking, and says the survey tends to indicate that we just aren’t ready yet for this technology. Particularly when dealing with the security of the process.

John’s comments:

I was only thinking of the consumer acceptance issue – something
this industry rarely studies; the proponents of this think everyone cant wait
to use a cell phone to pay for anything; the reality of consumer acceptance in
this article is defined in an ASIAN market where everyone is born with a cell
phone in each ear. If the banks and Telcos cant get this done how are the truly
little cell phone parking companies from

Europe

going to do this with one application – meter payments? I had one of them ask
how they could clear their transactions through Visa/MC AFTER they had made
their decision to sell in the

US

!

Does anyone really think Citibank, Visa, and MC, are going to give
the Telcos control of their brands and cards? The Telcos will actually have to
create a new payment technology for themselves because of economic issues
linked to interchange in my view. The Telcos want a piece of the interchange if
these transactions run through their network and those big boys who just went
public aren’t giving that cash cow up anytime soon.

The public parking industry thinking (contrary to the international
business community) is about a killer technology application (like P&D five
years ago) that will come into the market and solve the parking issues
especially for on-street. The reality is that no payment technology alone will
make that happen unless it is supported by the needs of an execution play. In
short, cities need lots of marketing and community participation with the
addition of technology that gives consumers convenient choices and merchants’
value.

The technology used by "pay by cell phone" operators in the US is different. You don’t simply walk up to a parking meter and bingo, use your cell phone. You must first sign up and give the company your credit card number. THEN you can use the service. The process is outside the TELCO providence, except of course that someone has to pay for the phone call. The security of the CC and the transaction is assured by the Pay by Cell company, not the TELCO.

Nevertheless, John does have a point in that the truly successful parking operation offers their customers many different ways to pay, including Pay by Cell.  The most successful municipal parking operation I have seen was in Vail, Colorado where the onstreet operations used P and D, in car meters, on street meters, permit parking and debit cards. All in the same place. Customers got to select which was best for them. This town, which makes its living on tourists, but had many visitors who stayed long enough to become residents, wisely knew that one size didn’t fit all.

And that was 15 years ago.

JVH