ROTTERDAM CITY LAUNCHES CREDIT CARD PARKING

Rotterdam is launching 44 public parking machines in its first phase of deployment at a major public unveiling at 10.00 CET on 11 December by Stefan Hulman, alderman responsible for traffic and transportation in the City Council. This is a major international contract for UK-based CreditCall, with a second phase of deployment expected for 400 additional machines in 2004.
This project is a shining example of pan-European technology collaboration. UK-based CreditCall is working with Parkeon’s Netherlands Distributor, TMC, which is providing the parking machines for the Rotterdam-managed project. The existing parking machines were previously only able to accept payment by chip based debit cards (Chipknip in the Netherlands) since the withdrawal of coin payment in 2002. This proved difficult for visitors and tourists which is why integrated machines that could accept both the Chipknip debit card and the internationally universal Visa and Mastercard were specified. The new Parkeon (formerly Schlumberger) -manufactured machines will use the CreditCall transaction processing system to authorize credit card payment and dispense tickets within a few seconds.

City Council of Rotterdam’s machines will be enabling mag-stripe credit card transactions in the short term. In due course the progression to EMV (Europay MasterCard Visa chip card) compliance by January 2006 will be a straightforward upgrade process using the CreditCall EMV.LIB transaction kernel software. This is made possible by the technology in the parking machines, which already contain chip-capable card readers. EMV compliance is a mandatory requirement for all card payment terminals to accept Chip card transactions by January 2005

Peter van Veen, CEO of “Stadstoezicht” the agency responsible for areas including parking, within the Rotterdam local government organization, said: “We are proud to be a pioneering council in our deployment of technology and services in ways that help us contribute to making Rotterdam a more atrractive place, specifically through parking policy, keeping the inner city reachable for vistiors and shoppers and providing ample parking space and sufficient payment options. After the deployment of ‘card only’ and ‘mobile paying’ we were desperately awaiting a credit card solution, specifically for visitors and tourists. Besides the technological development aspect, Dutch banking organizations were not that eager to work with us on this innovation, which is why we looked overseas. By working with truly international companies, we have created a logical solution for the credit card demand. CreditCall has proven itself to be at the leading edge of its field and has proven its expertise through ease of deployment, cost effectiveness and quality of consultancy.”

Nick McGarvey, Managing Director of CreditCall, said: “The Rotterdam installation is far bigger than any previous deployment of card authorisation and processing technology in Europe. Nijmegen was CreditCall’s first overseas payment services provision project, which continues to work faultlessly. Rotterdam demonstrates that we have truly international capability and continues our European expansion.”