Peppercoin Processes Cell-Phone Parking Payments in Las Vegas

Reino Enforcement Technology on Wednesday will begin processing parking fees on 15 meters in downtown Las Vegas through Peppercoin Inc.'s micropayment platform. The meters, which control 150 parking spaces in the city's business district, allow drivers to charge initial parking fees, as well as additional time, to credit and debit cards via their cell phones. The city, which has been undergoing a downtown building boom, sees the new meters as a way to meet demand for metered parking while eliminating the need to hunt for change. “We are trying new parking technology to make it more convenient for customers to enjoy a downtown that is accessible and a place where people can easily conduct business,” said Doug Selby, city manager, in a statement. The deployment represents an extension of Peppercoin's payment technology into unattended points of sale with low-value transactions but high volume potential. The Waltham, Mass.-based company, which began as a payments processor for Web-based digital content, has made card-present, small-ticket points of sale an important part of its expansion strategy. The U.S. on-street parking market generates an estimated $10 billion a year in fees, with each payment falling into the $1-to-$2 range. This market, along with transit, are now key target markets for Peppercoin, according to Mark Friedman, the company's president and chief executive. “We're very excited about transit and parking,” he tells Digital Transactions News. “They're two huge areas of opportunity for Peppercoin.” The Las Vegas meters processing through Peppercoin are part of what Reino calls its mPark network, so-called because drivers can buy time by entering meter numbers and other information on their cell phones and have the fees charged to cards previously registered with Reino. The network sends SMS text messages to drivers when time has dwindled to about 10 minutes, allowing them to pay for more time on their phones, if needed. Reino, an Irvine, Calif.-based maker of high-tech parking systems, is installing mPark meters in Oklahoma City, Okla., and Yonkers, N.Y., as well as in Las Vegas. Peppercoin processes micropayments?generally, transactions under $5?by aggregating all payments for a particular merchant before submitting them to acquirers for settlement. In this way, it works against the tendency of interchange and other transaction fees to make such payments uneconomical.