CASHLESS PAYMENTS - THE HIGH TECH SOLUTION

This article considers the use of direct card payment technology in car parks. Paystations operated in the past by being networked to a central server, with card processing being carried out offline with batch polling. As car park charges rose, it became more economic to use card payment, and technology was needed to improve immediacy of processing and therefore machine security. GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) technology was used to provide reasonably reliable communications, enabling each remote machine to process fully online card transactions. Direct card payment on parking machines is now operational in many locations across the UK and overseas.