Sesam Sesam - Automagical Parking

BERGEN, NORWAY April 28, 2015: Doing something as old fashioned as driving to a shopping center can still be quite a high tech experience these days. The car has keyless entry, its navigation system tells you which roads to take, the road toll is paid electronically at speed and once arrived, your purchases might be made by waving your phone over an NFC sensor.

Amongst all the electronic transactions effortlessly made during such a trip, the odd one out is paying for parking. Perhaps the only paper transaction you will make that day, the system of receiving a paper ticket on arrival and processing it through several machines on departure is ripe for renewal.

Aiming to do just that, BT Signaal is now live with a no-stop, no-paper, no-hassle parking solution across two of the busiest parking garages in Bergen, Norway. With 3145 spaces between them, the queues at the gates and the payment machines can sometimes be a test of patience. Using the app Sesam Sesam however, drivers can forget the payment queues and stopping at the gates. After registering their license plate and payment details on their phones, the driver will see parking garage gates open automatically upon arrival, their license plates having been read and recognized on the fly. After walking past the payment queue and heading for the exit, the same optical character recognition process sends the driver off without a care in the world, while Swedish secure payment specialist PayEx takes care of the formalities.

The ability to operate continuously alongside any current paper token parking solution means users can gradually adapt to the tokenless system instead of changing their habits overnight. The sight of the neighbour's car being greeted by an opening gate without stopping will no doubt spur on late adopters.

BT Signaal is a key actor within development, implementation and operation of systems for electronic payment services.