Using a mobile-phone to pay for parking : Simon Perry: Schemes, dreams & trivia

"If Livingston don't keep their discipline, the inevitable could happen." - Mark Hateley, Setanta Sports (source:Colemanballs, Private Eye)

Using a mobile-phone to pay for parking

1st September 2003 by Simon

I’ve been thinking recently, wouldn’t it be great if you could pay for parking meters using your mobile-phone. Very often when I go to use a parking meter, I don’t have enough change - either because I don’t have any change in my pockets, or because the parking is so expensive it’s not possible to carry enough change.

It looks like someone else was thinking the same thing a while ago, as Australian company Reino have brought out a parking meter on Steroids.

To pay by phone, dial a toll-free line, then enter your space number and how much time you want on the meter. Reino docks your credit card and beams a message to the meter authorizing the transaction. When your time’s about up, Reino sends a text message to your cell, offering a chance to re-up.

It also has the added bonus that it send you a text when your time is running out.

Link Wired 11.09: Reino

Reino

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