Continuing along in our series of future technologies soon (or already) coming to the parking industry, we’re discussing blockchain. Yet another technology generating a lot off buzz in “non-parking” industries but will likely soon be implemented to support parking operations.

Blockchain is a distributed, immutable ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and assets. An asset can be tangible (a car, land) or intangible (patents, copyrights, brands). A Blockchain platform allows users and developers to create novel uses of an existing Blockchain infrastructure. Crypto currency is currently the most popular application of Blockchain.

There are number of opportunities in the parking industry ideal for the Blockchain and distributed ledgers. This is possible due to the security, trust, and transparency these technologies bring, as well as their decentralized, open, and democratized foundations.

Examples of how the parking industry could start using Blockchain are business processes such as knowing your customer (KYC), digital payments, authenticating the customer and the automobile digital identification, and parking enforcement. More specialized examples include customer monthly parking contracts and permits, accounts receivable, controlling fraudulent damage claims in parking garages, safely hiring and managing garage employees and contractors, and paying hourly staff, and many more.

Since these technologies would provide a safe environment for the garage and customer to discover, connect and transact directly, one of the possible outcomes would be tighter integration of the value chain with middlemen like aggregators more seamlessly integrated to provide the bottom line for the parking businesses.