Metric Parking and Creditcall

The parking industry is at the forefront of wave and pay contactless credit card technology.

The worlds first parking meter incorporating a payment system using contactless credit cards has recently made its debut at the Cartes exhibition in Paris.

Parking machine manufacturer Metric and card payment specialist CreditCall demonstrated the technology on the Visa Europe stand at the show only the third time wave and pay has been seen by the public.

The fully-operational contactless credit card parking meter made its debut at Retail Solutions earlier in the year and was later demonstrated to the British Parking Association.

Now its been viewed with major interest at Cartes 2007 from where it is expected to be certified and in production within three to six months.

The parking meter is a special version of Metrics new Aura machine that accepts payment using the newly issued contactless Visa payWave cards.

Visa payWave cards were introduced especially for low value transactions where the user needs to pay fast. The two partners in this innovative payment solution for pay and display say parking is a perfect application for the new cards.

Metric and CreditCall say the new cards bring exceptional convenience for motorists who simply want to park and pay as quickly and easily as possible.

Wave and pay offers users a clearly superior alternative to all existing payment methods, including coin, mobile phone and even traditional chip and pin credit cards. At the same time, wave and pay offers the lowest cost of implementation due to the simplicity of the card reader.

Said Metrics sales and marketing director Bill Laurie: Metric is committed to remaining as a market leader with the introduction of all new technology. And we are delighted to be involved in a partnership with CreditCall.

Everyone is convinced that the wave and pay contactless credit card will be a very popular option with pay and display machine users in the future.
He added: Metric is recognised for its innovation within the parking industry and over the last 40 years can claim many firsts, from the worlds first electronic pay and display meter to networked machines and vehicle ID on ticket.

Peter Alcock, CreditCalls marketing manager, said CreditCall was a specialist credit and debit card payments services provider serving the unattended terminal, e-commerce and retail PoS industries.

Operating a global processing network with processing nodes and bank connections in the US and Europe, the CreditCall network is one of the most resilient outside the banking industry, he added.

Visa Europe plans to commence public trials of contactless cards in the London where they will be able to be used for transactions up to 10.