Digital services
Cashless and contactless payments
Naturally, on accessing the car park, a motorist can still take a traditional paper ticket and pay by cash or card at a Pay-On-Foot (POF) machine before driving to the exit, but cashless and contactless payments continue to gain in popularity.
Making life easier for customers and operators
In response to changes in customer needs and behaviour, digital and payment trends, and the evolution of smart cities, we are constantly developing our parking management systems and our operational processes. We have offered various cashless and contactless payment options at all our parking facilities since 2016.
Value for customers
Cashless and contactless payments enable motorists to access and exit a parking facility using their payment card, just as they would pay for their groceries. This contemporary way of paying for parking enhances the customer experience and at the same time makes our payment transaction systems future proof.
Card payments are on the increase and many people don’t even carry cash any more. Our customers clearly like paying by card.
Top four advantages for the customer:
Customers can access and exit the car park using their debit or credit card or partner loyalty card, or smartphone
Customers save time as they don’t have to go to the Pay-On-Foot machine
No paper ticket to lose
No need to carry change
Value for operators
Cashless and paperless parking transactions make parking facilities safer and cheaper to run for operators and landlords. Even though the payments services provider charges a fee per transaction, there is no need to empty cash from the machine, deposit cash at the bank or purchase change. In addition, there is less wear and tear on the machines, less vandalism and less temptation for fraud as with cash.
Top four advantages for the operators and landlords:
All payment options open
Safer – less cash at the car park
Fewer breakdowns and reduced maintenance costs for parking management systems
Card payments are cheaper than cash
All these developments reduce the total investment and cost of ownership of the parking management system, making a cashless and contactless barrier system even viable in smaller car parks. Some car parks are even ‘cashless only’.
Figure 28 Cashless and contactless payments
Validation
We offer a number of schemes to assist our purpose partners. We call this validation – it means that our partners can reimburse their customers for all or part of their parking fee. This may be in the form of a free exit ticket or specific time or value reduction on a parking transaction. For example:
First hour for free when spending EUR 20 or more at a grocery store;
EUR 2 discount when spending EUR 20 or more at a fashion store.
Q-Park UK has launched a loyalty programme in conjunction with purpose partners.
Q-Park customers can easily earn benefits using the Q-Park Rewards app. Customers register their bank card in the app and use that card to pay for parking at Q-Park or one of the many high-street retail partners. Q-Park tracks the payment and gives the customer rewards and benefits based on the amount spent on parking.
Results
In 2018 we developed the Parking as a Smart Service (PaSS) platform. This will enable us to launch even more digital enabled value propositions (planning, payment, parking) to public and private landlords, and to commercial partners.
Figure 28 Parking as a Smart Service platform
