ARE CASHLESS PARKING SYSTEMS BEING GIVEN PROPER CREDIT

Parking operators now have many options for cashless payment systems for parking, including the acceptance of customers' credit cards and the issue of debit cards and smart cards. Such cards can be used in one car park only, or to pay for many other activities also. This article discusses whether there is now too much choice of cashless payment systems. Operators can follow two main approaches in introducing such systems. They can treat paying for parking as just one transaction among many, and provide multi-function cards that can be used for a wide range of activities and services, including bus travel and shopping. Credit cards are the best-known example of such cards, but have not yet made a very wide impact on parking payment, because their use for automatic parking payment was implemented relatively recently. In the UK, such use started at Gatwick Airport in 1990, and has spread to other airports, where the systems are usually well used. However, credit card payment systems have only just begun to appear for the increasingly popular pay-and-display parking system. An alternative approach is a parking-specific local system, which can sometimes later be extended to a multi-function card also covering bus travel and some other activities.