By Jay Landers
Two of the parking industry’s largest technology players have begun to offer automatic access and payment capabilities to off-street parking facilities across the United States, beginning in Philadelphia.
On May 14, Arrive, the global parking and mobility platform and parent company of the ParkMobile payment app, and Flash, a provider of off-street parking and electric vehicle charging technology, announced the launch of express pay at more than 30 Philadelphia locations that are equipped with Flash’s Vision license plate recognition technology. Drivers who use ParkMobile or Flash’s ParkWhiz app can enroll their vehicles in the service, after which participating locations automatically recognize their plate upon entry and exit and handle payment without any action required from the driver.
Testing in Philadelphia began more than a year before the official launch, with technical development between the two companies underway well before then. “We’ve been working with the Arrive and ParkMobile team for well over a year and a half, almost two years, to start to bring this to fruition,” said Dan Roarty, the chief digital officer at Flash, in an interview with Parking Today.
Why Philadelphia
The Philadelphia launch is the most visible outcome to date of the strategic partnership that ParkMobile and Flash announced in September 2024. The companies chose Philadelphia as the first city for express pay for a combination of reasons, including an established user base, a strong operator network, and a geography that made large-scale testing practical.
“We have a very large user base and have been in the city for a very long time, coupled with Flash’s footprint from an access and revenue control perspective,” said Andy Harman, Arrive’s head of global product line sales, off street and insights, in the interview with Parking Today.
Roarty added that the city’s dense urban core was a key factor. Philadelphia “has a very compact city center,” he said. “We knew that we could achieve the density of locations and the number of drivers to understand, if we make this available to a large number of drivers, does it start to change behavior? Do customers like the experience, and is it something they want to do again and again?”
The companies also credited a cooperative network of local partners as a big reason for starting in Philadelphia. “We have great partners in the city,” Roarty said, including the City of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia-based parking operator Parkway Corp., the real estate investment trust Brandywine Realty Trust, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Penn Medicine, and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The mix includes standalone parking garages, office buildings, museums, and surface lots. “We wanted to make sure that we had a wide variety of participants and make sure that it worked in a wide variety of parking contexts as well,” Roarty said. A full list of participating Philadelphia facilities is available here.
Strong response
Adoption data from the Philadelphia rollout suggests strong driver appetite for the service, Roarty said. “The moment you hang signs, 10% to 20% of early adopters almost immediately gravitate toward it,” he said. “It tells you that they’re looking for digital ways to pay. They prefer that method. Then once it’s active, it just grows organically week after week.”
At some locations, more than half of customers have chosen express pay, Roarty said. And once enrolled, “above 99.5%” of drivers continue to use the service, he said. “Once someone actually checks that box and says, ‘Yes, I want to participate in express pay,’ they stick with it. Anytime they park subsequently at locations that support express pay, they continue to use it. They don’t opt out.”
Traditional payment options, including paper tickets and credit card payment at kiosks, remain available at all participating locations. “Payment choice is very, very important for drivers,” Roarty said. “We give them that choice.”
Benefits for operators
For parking operators, express pay offers the benefit of improved gated ingress and egress times by reducing transaction time at the lane from roughly 30 seconds to under three seconds, according to Arrive and Flash.
Roarty also raised the prospect of express pay becoming a competitive differentiator for facilities. “It’s early days yet, so we can’t yet say that customers will prefer to park in garage A versus garage B, but we expect over time that is what will happen,” he said.
Roarty also pointed to a longer-term infrastructure implication: As digital payment adoption grows, parking facilities may be able to reduce the equipment footprint in their lanes. “They can maybe have a more cost-effective footprint when they’re deciding how much technology to bring into their garages,” he said.
Harman noted that this shift has already played out in European markets where Arrive has operated similar technology with other partners. “That’s where the physical footprint at a facility starts to change once that digitalization takes the next step,” he said.
Expanding beyond Philadelphia
Philadelphia is the proving ground, but the rollout is already moving beyond it. Harman confirmed that express pay is now active and growing in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Miami. “We’re not restricting” expansion to specific markets, he added, noting that operators outside those cities who want to enable the feature are welcome to do so.
Roarty described a broader national buildout already in motion. “We have installations getting active in dozens and dozens of cities as we speak,” he said. Miami, where both Flash and ParkMobile have large existing footprints, is among the markets receiving focused investment. “There are about a half dozen markets where we’ve started to push further along, and over the course of the year we’ll continue to expand that focus nationally.”
JAY LANDERS is the editor-in-chief of Parking Today. He can be reached at [email protected].
