We’ve had a front seat view of the explosion in mobile payment adoption and parking tickets are no exception: approximately one out of every three ticket payments processed on our platform originates from a mobile device.

We’ve done a lot of work to make the mobile experience as smooth as possible for smartphone users and it’s turned into a great feedback loop for parkers and municipalities. Most recently, we’ve seen great success combining mobile payments for parking with citation payments.

Every time we make it a little bit easier to pay a ticket from a mobile device we see an increase in payment compliance. There’s a lot to be said for the convenience of lifting a ticket from the windshield, pulling your phone from your pocket, and paying it within a minute before driving away. On top of that, with the ability to pay the ticket from within the city’s parking app, we’re eliminating the barrier of downloading the parking app the next time they need to pay for parking. This helps avoid future tickets. Everyone, from the city to the parker, is getting an improved experience.

See How Our Platform Is Increasing Mobile Payment Adoption

We’ve found that when it’s easy and painless experience to use the app, users become more likely to use the system again and the positive feedback loop continues. With the new in-app ticket payment feature we’ve taken everything we’ve learned about mobile payments and built it into a simple, clean, and fast interface.

How We Improved Efficiency

Using a barcode printed on the ticket, the smartphone instantly reads the ticket number and prepares for accepting payment. We don’t ask for any commitments up front, such as setting up an account. We just collect the minimum details to satisfy city requirements and process the payment. We’ve found that removing these seemingly small roadblocks leads to huge gains in payment rates. With some of our clients we’ve seen before/after scenarios where online payment rates have improved 20% after moving to our platform. That’s a big efficiency gain for the city–now they have 20% less people walking into offices and mailing in checks.

We’re really excited to see the how this latest round of mobile improvements helps our clients and we’re looking forward to further improving experiences for the city and citizens alike.

This article was written by Brandon Grubbs, Software Engineer at Passport