Twilio > Case Studies > PayByPhone's Innovative Use of IoT to Prevent Parking Tickets

PayByPhone's Innovative Use of IoT to Prevent Parking Tickets

Technology Category

Networks & Connectivity - NFC
Robots - Wheeled Robots

Applicable Industries

Consumer Goods
Telecommunications

Use Cases

Smart Parking
Time Sensitive Networking

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, PayByPhone is a mobile payments service that processes parking transactions for customers in Europe & North America. The company is modernizing old-school parking meters with a reliable and secure cashless payment system that simplifies everyday parking. The company removes the hassle of carrying coins and feeding the meter, enabling motorists in hundreds of cities and towns throughout North America, Europe, and Australia to easily pay parking meters from a mobile app. With some clients processing 90% of all on-street parking sessions via PayByPhone, it is the most widely used and fastest-growing mobile payments service in North America.

The Challenge

PayByPhone, a leading provider of mobile payments to the parking industry, was faced with the challenge of providing timely account notifications to customers about when their parking meters were about to expire. The company initially used an IVR-based payment method to handle account set-up, transactions, and confirmation of meter location and time needed. SMS reminders also started out this way. Five minutes before the parking expired, a user would get a text message, after which they could call back in via the PayByPhone system to extend their time. However, this approach required integration with multiple SMS suppliers using SMPP protocol and direct management of these relationships. This was a complex, time-consuming, and expensive endeavor. SMS is an incredibly effective delivery mechanism, but PayByPhone needed a more cost-effective, efficient solution.

The Solution

PayByPhone turned to Twilio in 2011 to cut costs, ease the challenge of managing relationships with multiple SMS providers, and more easily integrate SMS capabilities into its platform. PayByPhone uses Twilio SMS to send one-way notifications to motorists 5 minutes before their parking time expires, allowing them to add time without returning to their vehicle, and therefore avoid parking tickets. The mobile payments system determines if a transaction requires a reminder, calls the Twilio API, and sends an SMS alert to the user. The user can easily add minutes and increase time, straight from their phone, to deflect a parking ticket. PayByPhone is also looking to expand Twilio SMS as a payment tool, as well as to power an application that helps motorists find available parking in airports.

Operational Impact

After switching to Twilio, PayByPhone reduced costs threefold for outbound SMS texts across the US. Twilio also handles the time-consuming, expensive task of establishing and managing complex relationships with carriers and SMS providers, so PayByPhone doesn't have to. This allows PayByPhone to focus on its core business and areas of expertise. Additionally, Twilio can scrub out numbers with invalid formats, improving the quality of consumer data gathered and the consumer experience. The Twilio communications platform is well documented, straightforward to integrate, and easy to use and maintain, even for those developers who haven't used it before. This has supported PayByPhone's growth as the most widely used and fastest-growing mobile payments service in North America.

Quantitative Benefit