Dubai: Parking fees in Dubai can now be paid with a tap of your nol card on your Android mobile phone.
The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) recently launched a smart service enabling smartphone users to recharge their parking accounts by using the near-field communication (NFC) feature of nol cards and the RTA Dubai app.
The service, which currently only works on the Android platform, is part of the Dubai Government’s Smart City initiative.
To avail the service the users have to download the RTA Dubai app and create an account. The users can then use the nol card option to top up the e-parking purse available on the app, just by tapping. The system will then transfer the selected amount from the nol card to the e-parking purse.
The e-parking purse can be used to pay the parking fees instead of other modes of payment, without having to pay the additional transaction fees of 30 fils.
Other payment means include coins and text messages, nol cards and prepaid cards.
Maitha Mohammad Bin Adai, CEO of RTA’s Traffic and Roads Agency, said, “This service complements the use of nol card as part of the available and future payment means of parking fees. Nol card has been used in buying parking tickets through parking machines since 2009 and accounts for 15 per cent of other payment means provided by RTA.”
She added the new smart service will further reduce the need to go to parking machines to buy tickets.
“Paying parking fees through the e-parking purse using smart parking services is on the rise. The increase in the use of the service reached 30 per cent in 2017 compared to 2016, which is attributed to the multiple features of the parking services of smart apps,” she added.
