Brazil’s Estapar parking network has signed an agreement for automated billing via radio frequency identification-based payments. The agreement is expected to affect 1,000 lots, and the implementation is being handled by Fleetcor Technologies, which is already working on the project and expects to complete it during the first quarter of 2019.
Fleetcor, which develops payment solutions for use on all continents, has adopted a strategy called Beyond the Toll, which involves building RFID payment networks into parking lots and fueling stations. “There are 5.5 million users with the convenience of accessing a significant number of fueling locations—at Shell and BR fuel stations, and in parking lots throughout Brazil,” says Fernando Yunes, the president of Sem Parar.
The agreement will allow Sem Parar to expand its operations in urban centers, where it currently has 620 parking lots and 500 fueling stations in its portfolio. The company’s customers will be able to access a wider network, with the addition of 1,000 Estapar parking lots at airports, shopping malls, shopping centers, hospitals, sports arenas and clubs.
Thanks to the agreement, Estapar says it will attain greater competitive advantage and security in the financial transactions of its clients. Other gains include convenience to network users. In the future, the firm intends to expand these benefits to all of Sem Parar’s 5.5 million customers.
“The Brazilian market for parking places approximately 6 billion Brazilian real ($1.6 billion) per year,” Yunes says. “This partnership, with a main player in a segment so strategic to our growth plan, will enable Sem Parar to exceed the mark of 1,000 parking lots, reinforcing our market leadership by consistently increasing the solution’s availability to our customers.”
The implementation by Estapar complies with GS1‘s passive EPC UHF RFID protocol. Sem Parar employs Artesp‘s protocol, which utilizes AES 128 protection. “As the manufacturers themselves,” Yunes explains, “[Sem Parar] has a solution with lower implementation costs. Our customers can easily install the tags they are marketing.”
Simply put, the RFID process behaves like any other automatic-identification system, with a tag specific to each vehicle. This tag is used to pay for services. In all operations at the entrance and exit gates, the antenna reads the tag and forwards its unique identifier to an RFID reader. The data is then transmitted to a back-end system, confirming payment and authorizing the vehicle to exit the premises.
“Urban mobility needs to be more agile and convenient for the population, and this is something that guides us,” says André Iasi, Estapar’s CEO. “The agreement between our companies has this spirit and will bring great benefits to our customers.”
According to Iasi, Estapar intends to continue developing, deploying and administering RFID technology in its parking lot solutions to facilitate urban mobility. “Customers of Estapar now have a new payment option,” he states, “which brings greater fluidity and security in financial transactions, in addition to providing convenience.”
In the view of Fleetcor, middleware is at the core of this automation. “We have several systems integrators that, at the moment they receive a request for transit, process the action automatically,” Yunes says. “A request for collection is made at another layer, once the ticket has been issued with the amount to be charged.”