The City of Las Vegas has begun rolling out parking meters equipped with micropayments technology to enable drivers to pay for parking tickets using their mobile handsets.
The city council has so far deployed 15 new parking meters supplied by California's Reino Enforcement Technology that are equipped with the mPark micropayment platform and Peppercoin's Small Transaction Suite.
Registered drivers can use the service by calling a free phone number and entering the parking meter details and space number on their mobile hand sets. Customers can also opt to receive a text message 10 minutes before their meter time expires. Parking charges are billed to credit card accounts.
Elsewhere in the US, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is gearing up to roll out a card-based contactless payments system, developed by Cubic Transportation Systems, across 3000 buses. The LA MTA has also ordered 700,000 smart cards which will be distributed to passengers.
Once the boxes have been installed, the company says it will begin a pilot of the system, due to run for three to six months, which will involve around 50,000 peple, most of them company employees.
The LA MTA expects to have two million contactless payment cards in circulation by 2008.