How city motorists will navigate parking under cashless system

Beginning September 1, parking fees payment in Nairobi will go cashless as City Hall addresses loss of revenue associated with manual collections. But as a pilot that started on Monday demonstrated, many motorists remain in the dark on the new system.

Some have also questioned the reliability of the system and whether it will handle the estimated 13,000 daily parking transactions in the city.

County revenue collection has been outsourced to financial vendor Jambopay and Business Daily writer Njoroge Kiarie spoke with the project’s manager Conrad Siteyi on the challenges facing the system.

How does one pay parking fees under this new system?

The first time I’m using the service, I create an account. I dial the USSD code *217# on my phone to prompt me to create an account. I provide my name, my ID number and a PIN.

The same case applies with the mobile application. You download the Nairobi City County application from Google Play Store, install it and create an account. Once you log in, you create a personal account.

How do you transfer funds to the account?

You can use M-Pesa, Airtel Money, Visa, Matercard, yuCash, Orange Money or give cash to a Jambopay agent who will credit it to your account.

How does a motorist pay and will they get a receipt?

When one parks their car, you simply go to *217# to access your account or access it through the app. You look for the menu for parking, key in your number plate, vehicle type, indicate the zone and pay.

What does the zone mean?

Nairobi has two different parking fee zones. In the CBD for example, one pays Sh300 but in Buruburu, the fee is Sh200. These are different zones so the account gives you these two options.

Once all this is done, you key in your PIN and the amount is deducted from your account.

What proves that a motorist has paid?

If you pay through USSD, the app or the website, you’ll get an SMS confirming the payment. This is immediately once you pay. For those who pay online, you also receive a PDF e-receipt that you can print.

What if a motorist doesn’t have a phone?

There’ll be agents in the city. You walk to the agent, give them Sh300 and the details of your car.

If the agent can still handle cash, does this solve pilferage?

You are not paying to a county attendant but to a Jambopay agent. The attendant’s role is enforcement only. The agent is independent of the county and theirs is a business. They have gone through a sign-up process with due diligence carried out. Most are like bank agents.

When will they be in the streets?

A lot have been signed up and we only await activation. By next week when we begin the pilot, you should see them.

A lot is riding on this system. What if it fails?

We have taken measures to mitigate against failure. One is that the system is replicated on three sites. Assuming that the server in the first site goes down, the other two are still accessible.

There’s also redundancy on the Internet connection to the servers. We have dedicated bandwidth for the system and then there’s a fail-over that takes over if the primary connection fails.

Is the system robust enough to handle the traffic?

We have conducted stress-testing and we guarantee that the system can handle the 13,000 parking slots available in the city.

Can one pay before they get into the city, when they are at home?

Yes you can but during our demos, we have learnt that people prefer to secure the parking first before paying. We anticipate that this is what will happen because you could come into town and not get a county parking spot.

But you get a spot in a private parking lot and rather than run the risk of paying double, one would prefer to secure the parking space first.

If I pay in Karen, is my parking valid even in the CBD?

There’s no problem because the system will reflect that you’ve paid parking for the day. The payment is valid all over the county.

If a motorist pays in a Sh200 zone, what happens when they come to the CBD?

In the menu, there’s an option for a top-up where you just pay the difference.

What about people with two phones?

You can register two mobile numbers. You can pay using any number. Even a friend can pay your parking fee. What is important is that the number plate is recorded as paid.

The USSD system is only open to Safaricom and Airtel users. What about other networks?

We have first developed an app for Android with those for Windows Phone and iOS to come in three months. This is where the majority of smartphone users are.

In the same way, we have begun with Safaricom and Airtel because that is where most of the subscribers are. We’ll move on to Orange but we know yu is being sold so we will wait to see what happens.

How will Jambopay make sure the county officers don’t clamp vehicles whose parking has been paid?

Once you pay, that information is sent to the server where the enforcement officer can query to see if a car’s parking fee has been paid. If not, the cars are flagged in the system.

There’s another guy whose job is clamping. His device will tell him that in this street, these cars need clamping.

If your vehicle has been clamped, you don’t have to look for that guy or go to the cash office, you log on to your account and pay the fine. This sends an alert to the clamping unit that a certain vehicle needs to be un-clamped.

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