TECHNOLOGY IN PARKING
FEATURE
Mastercard and Visa-enabled NFC handsets will be sitting in thousands of pockets across the UK.
Simon Blundell, parking supervisor from Tunbridge Wells, and Sharon Whelan, UK marketing manager of PayByPhone, demonstrate the UK’s fi rst NFC-enabled parking service
‘tap and go’ transactions, and this is expected to grow. A recent survey among technology industry experts by Pew Research suggested that by 2020, NFC transactions would replace most cash and credit purchases. As well as retail checkouts, NFC readers are now being introduced in parking facilities – in April 2012, the fi rst NFC- enabled parking meters in the UK went into operation in Tunbridge Wells, offering the service in all 15 of the council’s car parks. This system, deployed by PayByPhone, uses NFC electronic tags on parking meters to automatically launch its parking app on a suitably-enabled smartphone rather than using a direct tap and pay credit card-style system. The user taps the phone on the NFC logo, which opens the payment page of the app, with a unique parking location number displayed. The user then enters the amount of time they wish to park, and taps in their card security code, confi rming to end the transaction. However, direct payment capability is already starting to come to UK mobiles – Samsung has distributed 1,000 of its Visa-enabled Galaxy S3 smartphones to VIPS at the London Olympics, and Orange already offers its own Quick Tap service in conjunction with Barclaycard. NFC is starting to become a standard feature on the latest smartphones – more than 50 models are currently NFC-enabled – and soon,
www.britishparking.co.uk
‘NFC payments are set for rapid growth in the UK during 2012 when millions of NFC- enabled smartphones will become available,’ says Robin Bevan, commercial CEO at PayByPhone. ‘Using this technology to further improve our phone parking makes the service so much easier for customers to use. That is why we have invested in developing this technology and will be rolling it out to all of our clients during 2012.’ Leading parking technology company APT Skidata is among those manufacturers already including NFC technology as standard in its portfolio of contactless methods for direct ‘wave and pay’ payment. Its new Artema EMV Level 2 contactless payment module is now an integral part of its latest payment devices (and can be retrofi tted into existing terminals). Artema EMV reader accepts a number of different contactless payment types, including Visa and MasterCard cards and suitably enabled NFC-equipped mobile phones.
The system uses NFC electronic tags
on parking meters to automatically launch its parking app on a suitably- enabled smartphone
Overcoming challenges But there is still plenty of work to be done before NFC becomes more widely adopted for more complex parking ticket applications. Although the basic swipe credit card-style payment element of NFC smartphones is well advanced, the big leap forward with NFC will happen when multiple products can be used seamlessly on different devices across different manufacturers, network operators, services, applications and readers – for instance, carrying parking season tickets on the phone and other service or ticketing ‘tokens’ that can be used with a quick swipe as you go along, rather than having to open additional apps on the smartphone or use a specialist reader for different functions. Ultimately, this should mean a super-convenient swipe and go system for consumers where the technology is completely in the background. There are big issues still surrounding standardisation of some of these technical elements. More is required to make such systems seamlessly interoperable – and convenient for customers to use for multiple services. However, as it develops, NFC promises to be a major technology for consumers, and it will certainly be one that you’ll be hearing a lot more of.
AUGUST 2012 29
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