Tolling

With continued advancement in ITS, technology combined with lower costs have facilitated the emergence of barrier free road tolling and more recently, congestion charging schemes in Europe. These advancements have provided more options to manage road capacity.

The success of congestion charging and the continued proliferation of road tolling across Europe are ultimately dependent on road user approval and the seamless integration of all users into the process.

The channels for the collection of concession or congestion payments from road users are continuously evolving. This new era in traffic management calls for a wider range of payment options for road users. The authorities and scheme operators can today provide road users today with a dearth of payment options; users prepay or post pay, they can use cash, direct debits from bank accounts, credit or debit cards and mobile phones.

The collection of concession payments over an existing payment network like Payzone’s is quite straight forward. In retail outlets, payments are generally made using terminals attended by cashiers or unattended vending units that interact with the user.

Users can make pre and/or post payments depending on the service offered by the scheme operator. The user may be registered and known to the scheme operator or the user can be unregistered and have not used the service before.

The payments can be linked directly to the scheme operator’s platform or alternatively the payments can be accepted by Payzone’s payment platform and settled later with scheme operators i.e. Payzone manage the cash. All transactions have an electronic audit trail from start to finish.

Payzone can also provide low cost payment facilities in ‘next generation’ payment channels. We provide facilities that enable road users make toll payments via their mobile phone. Users can send simple SMS text payments or use applications on WAP, JAVA handset and 3G phones. Our mobile services are being used today in toll operations across Europe and Asia.

The technological advances in communications and retail payment devices now allow for more interaction between the host system and user. Once the road user is validated, the host could also send back concession history, outstanding balances etc. giving the users even more payment options. Scheme operators can also use this payment platform to accept user registrations and the payment providers relationships with the retail world can be leveraged for merchandising and awareness campaigns. Further savings will be achieved through mobile technology as users are alerted when they need to make payment, making this a faster and a more convenient service.