URA and HDB developing application to pay for parking through mobile devices

Coffeeshop staff may soon have one less task on their list, and the ubiquitous cries of “summon lai liao!” could be made a thing of the past, as a digital parking application is now in its experimental stage. 

Announced by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and Housing & Development Board (HDB), together with the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech), the parking app is meant to function as “a transition step and provide important learning points” before the move to the satellite-based ERP system expected to arrive in 2020.

This new app is able to calculate parking fees automatically, only requiring the user to fill in three fields — their vehicle number, the car park number, and the parking duration, in increments of 30 minutes. Parking fees can be paid for using credit or debit cards, and any surplus parking fees will be refunded if users end the parking session earlier. Similarly, users can extend their parking duration remotely via the app.

Under this system, drivers are spared the hassle of having to peel of tabs on the parking coupons (and run the risk of tearing the wrong tabs!), and parking attendants will be able to simply key in the vehicle’s number plate to check for a valid parking session.

A digital parking application solves issues we all face as drivers — not only will we never run out of parking coupons, we’ll never have to interrupt our nice hot bowl of bak chor mee to extend out parking session. Additionally, a digital parking system will be more environmentally friendly as less paper is used to print coupons. Click here to register.