You know when you go to the worst place in the world – the shopping centre – and you have to pay for parking, otherwise you’ll be walking miles before you even get inside the building? And then the worst thing happens and you lose your parking ticket which means you have to pay a fine on top of all the money you have spent, because window shopping is the mall temptress of the underworld? Well, this local startup is making all that a little easier.

It’s called KaChing and officially went live on Tuesday with promises of cashless, ticketless parking systems that allows drivers a “seamless entry and exit to malls.”

Jaco Marais, managing director and co-founder of KaChing, explained:

How it works is that you download the application from the Apple Store or the Android Google Play store and then you register. And during the registration, you sign up with your vehicle number plate.

We then have cameras at each and every entrance and exit at the malls that we’re currently live, and we do licence plate recognition and it will open the boom when you go and park.

As you exit, the boom will open again and we deduct the money either from your credit card or your prepaid account.

KaChing has patented its back-end technology that deals with logging parking details.

At the moment, KaChing is live at Johannesburg’s Morningside, Melrose Arch and Campus Square shopping centres and is installing its tech at Thrupps Illovo Centre in Johannesburg and the Pavilion Shopping Centre in Durban.

We have wider discussions with the large retailers or large landlords across the country to get this into as many malls as possible.

We would be very interested in global opportunities but at this point in time our focus is on South Africa.

Oooooo, weeeeee.

[source: fin24]