BC Business
Top 20 Innovators in BC, Digital Payment Technologies
Congratulations to Digital Payment Technologies, #18 in 2011's Most Innovative Companies in B.C. Perhaps the truest endorsement for this company comes from one of our panellists, who says, “I hate their product, but I like the company.”?
Perhaps the truest endorsement for this company comes from one of our panellists, who says, “I hate their product, but I like the company.”
There’s probably not much the folks at Digital Payment Technologies (DPT) can do to make us fall in love with pay parking, but they’re doing a lot to make it smarter. Founded in 1997, DPT has gradually become a leader in the digital parking meter world, selling about 6,000 pay stations as of 2010, including 750 to the City of Houston in a 2006 deal.
Municipalities and institutions naturally want to make sure they never miss out on a single parking penny. That’s where DPT comes in. Its main tactic is replacing those single-spot meters with pay stations that cover multiple stalls. The City of Tampa, for instance, replaced 1,000 post meters with 146 DPT pay stations. This, combined with options to pay by credit card, cellphone or coupons instead of coins, ramps up collection efficiency. Likewise, new licence-plate scanning technology shaves time off enforcement. And of course, the stations are hooked up to an online control system that allows managers to monitor and adjust the system from anywhere in real time, giving them more insight into parking availability and more control over prices.
Whether such innovations will make parking a happier experience for drivers, however, is another matter.