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Paris suburb Issy-les-Moulineaux plans to enable motorists to pay for on-street parking with their mobile phones starting in September, a scheme that could spread to at least seven other regional cities by early next year. The service, to be launched by large French parking operator Vinci Park SA, would be a first for France, although similar services are available in the United Kingdom, Belgium and the United States. In France, motorists pay for their on-street parking either with cash, prepaid cards or, more recently, credit and debit cards, says Philippe Lerouge, consultant and head of the joint venture, which will operate the "Pay by Phone" service in France. The UK branch of U.S.-based mobile-payment company Verrus Mobile Technologies Inc. and French bank Credit Mutuel are involved in the venture. "The difference is, with phones, you pay remotely, and you can extend and stop (the parking session)," Lerouge tells CardLine Global sister publication Cards&Payments. "You have SMS text alerts, which is not possible without the mobile." France-based parking-payment vendor Parkeon SAS also will participate in the scheme. Vinci operates about 6,000 on-street parking spaces in Issy-les-Moulineaux. Vinci Chairman and CEO Denis Grand this week said the parking operator will expand the service to seven other cities by early 2010, according to Le Parisien, a French newspaper. Backers of the Pay by Phone scheme expect it to expand further than that in France for parking and bicycle rental. Vinci also runs large parking lots and garages in France that could offer the service. Verrus offers its Pay by Phone service in dozens of cities in North America and Europe, using interactive voice response, text messaging or the mobile Internet to communicate with users. Among the biggest success stories is in the London borough of Westminster, says Robin Bevan, CEO of Verrus UK. Motorists pay 85% of their parking fares in the borough with their mobile phones because officials eliminated the cash option for parking in the district two and a half years ago, he tells Cards&Payments. The rest pay by cards. Parking revenue for the borough has increased by 20% to 6 UK pounds million (US$9.9 million or 7.1 million euros) in large part because the roughly 650,000 Pay by Phone users generally are parking longer and the borough eliminated cash theft from the machines, Bevan says. Westminster also has saved an additional 2 million pounds in operating costs, he adds.
