Arrive CEO Cameron Clayton leads the newly rebranded mobility company formerly known as the EasyPark Group in its mission to make cities more livable through comprehensive parking and transportation solutions.
By Jay Landers
Cameron Clayton has loved cities since he was a small boy. However, Clayton — the CEO of Arrive, the parking and mobility giant formerly known as the EasyPark Group — grew up on a sheep farm in New Zealand, far from any urban center. But his first visit to one left an indelible impression on him.
“I never even went to a city until I was five years old,” Clayton said in an interview with Parking Today. “As a five-year-old little boy, I thought cities were awesome. Trucks, trains, and buses — it was so much energy and hustle and bustle and everyone’s trying to go somewhere. When you’re a farmer’s kid who only plays with your brother and your dog, going to a city is awesome.”
Clayton’s love affair with cities evolved as he gained more experience living in them. “I’ve lived in cities ever since then, all over the world. You learn that they’re pretty broken as well. There’s lots that doesn’t work very well. There’s congestion. There’re all kinds of challenges.”
The opportunity to address some of those challenges prompted Clayton to take the helm of the EasyPark Group in 2022. “The purpose of Arrive is together we make cities more livable,” he said. “That’s what we’re all about. That’s why I joined.”
The scale of impact possible in the parking and mobility sector particularly appeals to Clayton. “Right now, [Arrive is] doing about 2 billion transactions a year around the world,” he said. “If you save two minutes per transaction of time, all of a sudden, you’ve got thousands of years per year that you’re giving back to the citizens in cities all around the world. The scale of that is pretty profound if you think about it.”
The role also enabled Clayton to stay focused on a key question that has defined his career, which has included leadership positions at The Weather Company and IBM. “My whole career has been based around, how do you use data to help people make better decisions?” he said. “That’s the common theme, I would say, in my story.”
From EasyPark to Arrive
In June 2025, EasyPark officially rebranded as Arrive, a change that reflects the company’s dramatic expansion beyond its original focus on mobile paid parking. Before it could assume the new moniker Arrive, EasyPark first had to strike a deal with the parking technology provider Flash. In January 2021, Flash merged with the smart parking solutions provider Arrive Mobility, including its ParkWhiz and BestParking consumer brands.
The rebranding follows two major acquisitions that significantly expanded the company’s capabilities and global reach. This past January, EasyPark closed its acquisition of the Flowbird Group, a provider of parking hardware and equipment and other transportation solutions operating in 4,350 cities in 80 countries. In February, the company completed its purchase of Parkopedia, a provider of connected car services that enable drivers to locate and pay for parking, electric vehicle (EV) charging, fuel, and tolls in 90 countries.
Both deals were instrumental in reshaping the company’s capabilities and global footprint. “Our exponential growth over the past 12 months, especially with the integration of Flowbird and Parkopedia, has dramatically expanded our scope of business and product offerings,” Clayton said in a June 12 news release announcing the rebrand. “We need a corporate structure and identity that mirrors our entire portfolio — moving beyond just parking.”
The choice of “Arrive” wasn’t arbitrary. “The brand is also a commitment to help people arrive literally and figuratively where they want to go,” Clayton told Parking Today. “It’s also a clear nod that we’re not just a parking company anymore. Parking is a big part of what we do, but we also do transport solutions. We do payments. We do automotive solutions. We really are now a mobility platform business.”
Although Arrive serves as the parent company name, local consumer brands like ParkMobile in the U.S., RingGo in the U.K., and EasyPark in mainland Europe will continue operating under their established identities.
Building global reach
The Flowbird acquisition brought two significant advantages, Clayton noted. “One is a whole series of new markets around the world,” he said. “We’ve gone from being in about 20 countries in the world to now being in over 90 countries in the world. We’ve gone from being in Europe and North America to now being pretty global in our footprint as a company.”
The second major advantage involves Flowbird’s hardware capabilities. “The second [benefit] is really a focus on exceeding customers’ expectations and bringing hardware and software solutions together,” Clayton noted. This capability is particularly valuable as the company targets what Clayton sees as the parking industry’s biggest opportunity — “moving free space to paid space,” as he put it.
Clayton pointed to demographic trends that make this capability crucial. “If you look at the top 100 cities in the world today, and you look at that same list predicted for 10 years’ time, 70% of those cities change,” he said. “Seventy of the top 100 change, and they move to India, Africa, and Asia, essentially. In those markets, they’re all on a journey from free space to paid space. In order to help support those cities in that journey, they need hardware and software solutions.”
The Parkopedia acquisition served a different strategic purpose, focusing on creating seamless user experiences. “Parkopedia [brings] another exciting acquisition for us in really a different way, which is trying to bring the simplest, easiest way to park possible,” Clayton said. “You pull into a space. The car knows where it is. The car’s got a digital wallet in it, and it automatically looks up the location, the regulation, and the pricing profile starts.” After receiving a confirmation message, the driver can go about their business, eventually returning and driving away, while the in-car payments system automatically ends the parking session. “It can be completely frictionless,” he said.
Size with a mission
The larger scale that the acquisitions afford Arrive helps the company improve its customer service, Clayton said. “I think it lets us support our customers at a higher level with better products and better solutions. That’s why we’re doing this, to help our customers support their customers and ultimately citizens in cities around the world.”
Size alone isn’t the goal, Clayton said. “Being bigger for its own sake is not very appealing to us. It’s really only so that we can make cities more sustainable, reduce congestion, help with traffic, help with space, help with regulation, and help people make better decisions ultimately.”
The parking market’s size justifies the scale, Clayton argued. “This is a big market,” he said. “I think it’s a much bigger market than most people even understand. It’s a multi-trillion-dollar market globally. To support that market and all the customers in it, you have to have some size and some scale to do that while at a high quality.”
Connected parking solutions
Despite significant recent technological advances in parking, Clayton sees substantial room for improvement. He identified several key pain points that the industry still needs to address, including the traffic congestion that results from drivers seeking available on-street parking spaces. “Something like 40% of congestion and traffic is caused by people slowing down to look for parking spots,” he said.
In part, the solution will require drivers to rethink when and how they decide where to park, Clayton said. “I think if people planned where they were going to park, we could solve” the problem of parking-related congestion, he said. “But most people don’t plan where they’re going to park. They go to some close proximity to their destination.”
Arrive is well positioned to help drivers plan their parking in advance, rather than simply hoping for the best as they near their destination. “Companies like us know where the spaces are open and available,” Clayton said. “We should be connected into your Apple Maps or your Google Maps or whatever it is, and help you get to that space easily and efficiently.”
EV charging represents another growing challenge and opportunity. “The combination of parking and charging, if you’re an electric vehicle driver, continues to grow, despite what some of the media says in certain countries in the world,” Clayton said. “EV use is growing pretty dramatically, and EV drivers are looking for parking and charging. Solving that problem is complex.”
Arrive has developed solutions to address this challenge. “We’re excited about a new EV park-and-charge product that makes it super simple,” Clayton said. “With three or so clicks on your phone, your parking and charging are all taken care of for your vehicle.”
Beyond traditional parking
Looking ahead, Clayton sees Arrive’s role extending well beyond traditional parking services. “At the heart of it, Arrive is really about urban travel,” he said. “Digital payments is a key part of that. Optimizing parking is a key part of that. Our mobility-as-a-service solutions are a key part of that.”
He points to the city-state of Monaco as an example of the company’s broader mobility vision. “Whether you’re on a tram, a bus, or e-scooter, or going to a soccer match, or going on a ferry ride, you can do it all from one mobility-as-a-service product,” Clayton said.
As cities worldwide continue to evolve and face increasing mobility challenges, the parking and mobility sector will play an increasingly important role in addressing those challenges. This outlook has Arrive optimistic about its prospects as well as the future of the industry more broadly.
“We’re super excited about the future of mobility,” Clayton said.
JAY LANDERS is the editor-in-chief of Parking Today. He can be reached at [email protected].
