One of the leaders in connected car services and movement analytics, Inrix, has formed a new partnership that adds a new smartphone payment facility to its Off-Street Parking service, which can now provide a seamless end-to-end user experience, from location through to completion of the transaction.
Inrix Off-Street Parking provides drivers with real-time parking information that includes routes to the closest garage locations, detailed rates, limitations and restrictions, and real-time occupancy. It offers access to the world’s most comprehensive and accurate parking database that includes more than 29 million confirmed spaces in over 90,000 accessible locations, spanning 4,000 cities in 64 countries. The Off-Street Parking service only displays publicly accessible, non-restricted parking spaces, including both free and fee locations, so users are never misrouted to locations that are unavailable to the general public.
Mercedes-Benz is now including the service in its E-Class model in Europe, and it will be available in the USA this summer. The newly integrated feature enables drivers to easily find, compare and navigate to available off-street parking spaces using the Comand infotainment system.
Inrix has now announced the integration of Vancouver-based PayByPhone’s on-street parking data and payment options into its On-Street Parking service, which strengthens the prediction capabilities of the system by adding historical and real-time parking transaction information. It also adds significant coverage to Inrix’s in-car payment service in North America and Europe. With payments available via mobile web, smartphone, smart watch applications and now the car, PayByPhone makes it easy for consumers to handle parking transactions on-the-go for some of the largest and most complex parking markets throughout North America, France and the UK.
Inrix launched the industry’s first dynamic off-street parking service in 2013, followed by the first integrated on-street parking system in June 2015. In August last year, Inrix acquired ParkMe, a leader in parking location, availability and reservations worldwide, making the company one of the leading providers of parking information and services to many leading auto makers, including Audi, BMW, Lexus and Mercedes, as well as transportation agencies, and drivers around the world.
“PayByPhone plays a vital role in making our On-Street Parking the highest quality service with the broadest coverage, and solidifies us as the preferred end-to-end smart parking solution for the connected car,” said Alex Israel, vice president and general manager of parking at Inrix. “In an industry where the most accurate data and seamlessly integrated user experiences will win, our parking system will give our OEM partners a critical edge over the competition.”
Kush Parikh, CEO of PayByPhone, noted, “Our partnership with Inrix enables us to create an integrated solution for the connected car, allowing millions of consumers to easily and securely find and pay for parking, right from their dashboard or companion app. Like Inrix, our goal is to provide intelligent parking solutions, and we’re excited that our high-quality data and payment services will be coming to cars very soon.”
