Any Vancouver driver who’s shunned pocket change in favour of digital payments at the city’s parking meters will no doubt be familiar with the PayByPhone Technologies Inc. logo adorning the nearly 12,000 devices.
But using a phone to pay for parking didn’t come quite so naturally for many drivers when the West Coast company launched in 2001.
“The first years in our business were really hard,” said Andy Gruber, the company’s president and CEO for global markets.
“The business started before there were even iPhones in the market.”
By the time Volkswagen Financial Services – a subsidiary of German auto giant Volkswagen Group (ETR:VOW3) – acquired the Vancouver company in December 2016, making payments via text messaging was no longer the centre of the business model.
Instead, the company developed a platform for jurisdictions looking to help drivers pay for parking using a mobile app as well as extend their parking sessions without returning to the meter.
“Parking is one of the very real pain points in today’s mobility story that really is crying out for a solution if you think about the many hours that people spend trying to find a parking spot,” Gruber said. “Cities are happy with it because it comes down to providing a better service to the citizens.”
The development of the platform came at the same time smartphone use became more ubiquitous throughout the world, eventually catching the eye of Volkswagen Financial Services in the mid-2010s.
“Before, we were like many other startups obviously trying always to survive to the next funding round,” said Gruber, who previously sat on PayByPhone’s board before taking the job of global president and CEO.
That changed soon after the acquisition when the new parent company determined PayByPhone would become the global head office for parking for the entire Volkswagen Group.
Since then, the team has grown to about 340 workers from 110 globally, two-thirds of which are based in Vancouver, specializing in everything from product management to technology.
Meanwhile, the number of registered users has ballooned to 60 million from 12.5 million as it processes nearly 130 million transactions annually.
And the company is now operating in 14 countries across the world, up from the six countries it was serving prior to the acquisition.
Cities and jurisdictions deploying the technology have also been experiencing various knock-on effects as a result.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London is in the midst of removing all 700 of its traditional meters, opting instead for 100% digital payments using PayByPhone.
Drivers are instead being directed to punch in a location number on their app, while staff are reducing their carbon footprint now that they no longer have to drive 37,000 kilometres annually to maintain and collect money from the meters.
And just south of the border, the City of Bellingham, Washington, reported parking meter violations decreased by the thousands after it signed on to use PayByPhone in late 2016.
While revenue declined for parking fines, the city collected an additional $200,000 in parking meter revenue in 2018.
“The openness to using digital payment channels is one of the key contributors to success in our marketplace,” Gruber said. “It’s been a fantastic ride.”
