Council takes parking fines payment online

Paying parking tickets fines has been made easy with the introduction of new payment channels through Auckland City Council’s web site (www.aucklandcity.govt.nz) and its call centre.

People paying online need one of the major credit cards, the ticket number and the registration number of the vehicle that received the ticket.

The ticket and registration numbers are enough to ensure the transaction is authentic.

Ian Rae, the council’s group manager information technology and communications, says the e-payments system is safe. He says it has been built to robust encryption standards, meaning it is secure for people paying to provide their credit card details without fear of those details being stolen.

The system, which has been under trial since February, has already been discovered by nearly 200 people with parking tickets, or bus and bike lane infringement notices, issued within Auckland City, and their payments successfully processed.

Previously people with parking fines could pay only at the Auckland City Council’s service centres, or by cheque through traditional post.

Parking infringement payment was chosen as the testing ground for the system because it was possible to authenticate payments without asking people to provide personal details. Applications for land information memoranda (LIMs) and special liquor licences will be the next online transactions rolled out on the web. The payment of licence renewals is also on the drawing board.

Joseph Flanagan, the council’s group manager, traffic and roading services, says developing the parking infringement payments system has meant ticket information has to be downloaded from handheld machines by parking wardens more frequently than for the older system.

He says if the ticket details can not be confirmed on the internet immediately, then people wanting to pay should try again later when those downloads will have been completed.

Mr Rae says the new e-channel is an added boost to the city’s website, which was judged seventh out of 100 in a United Nations e-governance best city web site survey in December.

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