In the past, I have talked to a lot of Transport Operators, also known as Mobility providers. Each of them had their own business model and way of working. Together with others from the TOMP working group, we coped with most of these models, making it possible to use the TOMP-API in their particular scenario. Using the so-called ‘Process Identifiers’ we can describe how the implementations of those Transport Operators want to be treated.
Recently, I had a discussion with a few of them, with a new use case that is relevant for parking companies: “Pick up the bill”. It can be applied to parking spaces with a barrier, with an existing identifying (payment) card. With the proposed solution, the parking operator can leave its process in place, the only thing it has to adapt, is assigning the payment to an external party: the MaaS provider or reseller.
How does it work? Let us zoom in into the process:
- Your car enters the parking lot, its license plate is scanned.
- Normally, at the end of your parking session, you would go to the payment terminal at the parking lot to finish your parking session. When the parking operator has implemented the TOMP-API’s one-stop booking endpoint (‘pick up the bill’ scenario), you can tap in the MaaS-app that you want to pay for your parking session. The MaaS-provider then sends a message to the parking operator that it will pay for parking session for a car with your license plate. The MaaS-provider will settle the payment with the parking organisation on a frequent base.
- You can exit the parking lot: the exit barrier will open as soon you are there.
Sounds convenient, isn’t it? No more searching for the payment terminal and no queues in front of it: you can pay while walking straight to your car. And on top of it, this functionality opens up all kinds of opportunities to the parking company for doing business with other mobility providers (for instance: reductions for frequent users).
Technically, this functionality can be implemented with 1 endpoint and some agreements between Transport Operators and Mobility Providers. If you want more details, look at https://github.com/TOMP-WG/TOMP-API/wiki/Use-cases-PB#pb38.
A very simple way to integrate existing parking functionality into the MaaS domain!
Edwin van den Belt