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The first U.S. parking meters equipped to process online authorizations for credit cards have gone live in Seattle. Moorestown, N.J.-based Parkeon Inc. has shipped the first 80 of its so-called pay-and-display parking terminals, which run wireless credit card transactions, for street parking in Seattle. Parkeon's contract calls for it to supply the city with 1,300 of the devices, with an option for a further 300, says Ken Greenwood, a marketing executive for the company. He estimates about 500 will be live by year's end. The terminals, which house Mobitex radio transmitters, transmit credit card data via a cellular network to a server in Moorestown, from which the transactions are forwarded to processors for authorization. Each terminal costs from $7,000 to $10,000 and controls from eight to 10 parking spaces. Many are solar-powered, Greenwood says. Screens on the devices guide customers through selecting parking time and receiving a printed, time-stamped ticket they display in the windshields of their cars. The payment server is being managed by CreditCall Communications Ltd, a U.K. company, which is also supplying the transaction-processing software. Up to now, card-accepting parking meters in the U.S. processed transactions in batch mode. CreditCall estimates that theft of coins as well as the use of lost and stolen credit cards costs up to 4% of parking revenue in the U.S. Greenwood says Parkeon has “two to three” other city contracts in the works for the new technology, which he says will be consummated over the next couple of months. So far, New Orleans has agreed to install 400 of the terminals. Formerly Schlumberger e-City, Parkeon has an installed base of 120,000 parking devices in 3,000 cities around the world.
