Paythru, a payments technology company, has launched a solution combining parking and electrical vehicle (EV) charging into a single transaction, increasing the ease of accessibility within the market.
The solution is designed to prevent the issues surrounding purchasing both a parking ticket and a separate ticket for charging purposes. By combining the solutions, EV users will be able to purchase both under one transaction utilising a cloud system.
“Instead of building yet another app we’ve built a platform in the cloud,” said James O’Neill, CEO of Paythru. “This means parking companies and charging companies just sign up, set their payment terms behind the scenes, and the user has one transparent transaction to pay for everything – which could be either through the car park or their EV charging app.
“Whatever they choose, we manage the payment split and make sure the parking and charging companies both get paid.”
The company claims the solution allows users to see a single parking and charging tariffs at their selected location – and to pay the appropriate fee.
The Park and Charge system automatically initiates the EV charge at the connected chargepoint and supports both time-based and kWh-based tariffs, increasing accessibility for drivers.
It is argued this approach makes the consumer experience as simple and easy as possible, and significantly mitigates the risk of penalty charge notices.
“This is the first application for consumers that recognises the need to park and charge. The EV revolution will stall unless we get the customer experience right and no one’s actually addressing this – until now,” O’Neill added.
“Having previously spent years working at EV charging providers, I have seen the impact of poor user payment experience on customer loyalty.”
The solution supports on and off-street parking options and can be connected to parking enforcement companies.
Paythru’s new system has spun out of a long standing project with Flowbird Smart City UK which recently completed its first local authority EV chargepoint pilot project for Wokingham Borough Council, with drivers now able to access the company’s app.
Park and Charge solutions are being developed across the UK and In 2021, EVBox partnered with online parking platform YourParkingSpace to offer EV drivers pre-bookable park and charge spaces across the UK.
The parking platform aims to establish the pre-bookable spaces at retail and hospitality locations with the idea of ensuring drivers are never more than 20 minutes away from an available chargepoint. The initiative will help to provide drivers with the “peace of mind” that a chargepoint is available upon arrival.
