When talking about payments innovation in the 21st century, PayPal is usually the first thing that comes to mind. The company took existing payment methods (debit, credit, and electronic/ACH transfer) and used the Internet for delivery and messaging. Ten years later it is one of a handful of financial companies that can claim nine-figure customer bases.
And there are dozens (hundreds?) of companies working on creating their own PayPal in relatively new frontiers: mobile, social networks, health care, micropayments, and so on. We’ll have several of them demoing at our upcoming FinovateSpring event May 11 (lineup here).
But you don’t need millions of users to create something of value. Case in point: Parkzing is a new service (with a great name) created in his spare time by Aren Sanderson, CTO of Third Ave Labs, the creator of mobile app discovery service Apptizer (great name #2).
Parkzing is a mostly free service that removes the hassle, and worry, from remembering to pay your parking fines. How it works:
- Users register their license plate number with the service
- Parkzing scans city parking fine databases daily
- If it finds a match, it contacts the user with a reminder to pay; reminders continue until the fine is removed from the database
- Optionally, users can give Parkzing their credit card number and the ticket will automatically be paid for a very economical $5 per ticket fee (see note 1)
This is one of those ideas that is so simple, yet so valuable, that you cannot believe it wasn’t invented the day that city databases went public. As you might suspect, not all cities post this info online, so it currently only helps those in San Francisco, Washington D.C. and NYC (request your city here).
Relevance to Netbankers: This would be a valuable service to offer online/mobile banking customers. It would differentiate you from the competition, help fill your city’s coffers, and add value to your payments card(s). The main downside? Liability for technical glitches that cause fines to go unpaid. A nominal fee for the service could fund a payments guarantee and provide a small bit of revenue.
Also, think about the bigger picture here. Why limit this to parking tickets? How about if my bill-pay provider scanned all my accounts every day and told me what I owed? Utilities, credit cards, school lunch account, the dentist, and so on. To some extent Mint, Yodlee and the other PFM/bill-pay players already do this. But as Parkzing demonstrated, there’s still room for innovations in bill pay.
Note:
1. Five bucks is incredibly low considering the convenience and the savings in late fees; in Seattle we owe an extra $25 after only 15 days. I’d be willing to pay $25 per year + $5/ticket for the service.
2. HT to VentureBeat for writing about it.