Today, I was thinking about how what a pain it is to deal with parking meters. I'm not complaining about paying to park. But it's the hassle of digging for change in my car to feed a meter. I know there are smart parking meters now where you can put your credit card in and pay for how much time you need.
But you always have to pre-pay and guess how long you're going to be there. In the Foursquare world we live in today, how long before I can just pull up, check-in, and go on with my business? Why can't it be post-pay based on when I check-in and leave the parking spot?
Well, for one, the City would lose major revenue from people who over pre-pay longer than they actually park (small $), but more importantly from parking tickets they won't write anymore (big $$$$). Putting the City's coffer aside for a moment, wouldn't that be cool?
That led me to think about e-commerce or mobile payments via check-ins, or what I call "check-in-commerce." Payments that get automatically made based on check-ins and check-outs. The City may never go for this, but I'm sure there are other applications of this concept, but I'm too tired to think of them on a Friday night =)
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