TimeTec Smart Parking 9/12: Cashless Parking Payment

November 02, 2021 TimeTec 0 Comments

When the parking system started to move from cash to cashless, what are the significant differences besides the absence of physical currency? To be precise, the cash payment form is loosely attached to the parking system; the relationship is just in its tallying process. The complication of cash handling happens outside the parking system. After manually tallying the cash with the system, the off-system cash handling includes the risk of temporarily keeping the cash and transporting it to the bank by trusted personnel. Overall, it is a tedious daily routine.

In contrast, in a cashless system, the complication happens inside the system, where there is almost no “handling” job required for the cashless money after the system collects the fees. Instead, there are settlements between the bank/payment gateway provider and the parking owner/operator behind the scene, with the terms and conditions signed before adopting the cashless system.

Teh Hon Seng explained the differences between cashless parking system and cashless merchant system, “It is far more complicated for a parking system to accommodate cashless payment than the normal merchant system. For example, the e-Wallet providers can go all out to acquire merchants. However, they can’t simply knock on the parking operators’ door and sign them up as merchants because the e-wallet must be seamlessly integrated with the parking access system. Besides, the parking transaction is not as simple as picking up merchandise and paying it according to the price tag when checking out.  The date and time of a car entering a parking site have to be recorded, and the fee calculation is based on the duration and parking rate set by the parking owner when checking out. Furthermore, when the customers check in, the system has to verify the validity of the payment card and whether it has sufficient funds to pay when he/she checks out. That explains why the parking operator is charged a slightly higher MDR (Merchant Discount Rate) than normal merchants.”

The parking access cum cashless payment system flow is illustrated in the following diagram:


Touch ‘n Go card is one of its kind for parking payment systems. The payment process flow is almost similar to the credit/debit card, and it is more widely used than credit/debit card in Malaysia’s parking industry.

The main advantage of the above cashless payment system embedded into the parking access system is that there is no payment process between entry and exit.  

When the License Plate Recognition or LPR is used as a parking access method, the cashless payment system is less attached. The common practice now is that the back-end parking system will link to an online payment portal consolidated with multiple payment methods. The customer can choose which payment method he/she prefers before exiting the parking site.

Teh Hon Seng said, “As one of the pioneers that provide cashless parking solutions, TimeTec Smart Parking System caters to all the above. Besides providing the unattended parking kiosk that combines Touch ‘n Go solution, credit/debit reader and QR code reader for e-Wallet into one kiosk, we are also an expert in LPR parking solution, and its payment system.”