Enabling smart city parking solutions through bespoke funding

For many local councils, governments and businesses across Australia and New Zealand, parking services and the associated user experience are in desperate need of an upgrade. There is a need, for instance, to promote safe transport options that ensure social distancing such as private vehicles and contactless payments. However, the advancement towards integrating the use of smart city projects and parking services into our community does come at a price.

Coupled with existing budget pressures, reduced revenue and increasing rate defaults, the economic pressure is felt across the community, businesses and councils such that funding new projects seems insurmountable. This creates a need to source alternative ways to fund the projects that will enhance communities and potentially provide a bottom-line benefit.

To this end, Maia Financial and Smart Parking have been working on a finance package that enables councils to continue to fund important smart city parking projects without the need for red tape and CAPEX signoff. This package is designed to provide flexible finance options through low-interest rates and a ‘zero upfront’ Smart Parking monitoring and enforcement solution.

Maia Financial is on the Procurement Australia and WALGA panels. Councils membership of these panels enables the engagement of the loan and the service in one package; providing ‘speed to value’ so that council can start delivering lower travel times, reduced congestion and emissions, safe transport, and increased retail spending benefits.

Our operational expenditure financing and Smart Parking solution means council has nil to pay for the first six months of the smart parking sensor based parking management system.

This OPEX funding delivers the benefits of the Smart Parking solution and, as the solution can be operated on a cost recovery basis, requires zero budget to get started. We thoroughly scope your requirements in partnership so that there is zero upfront to pay, and council requires as few as five additional parking infringement notices per working day to be cash positive day one for a 500 sensor deployment. 

“We have been working with the Maia Financial team over the course of the past year, looking at new, innovative ways to get technology into the hands of our customer base. The old capital expenditure model is not necessarily the most cost-effective way to be purchasing technology based solutions in 2020, with long leadtimes for funding approvals being just one of the road blocks to a more efficient, cost-effective solution. By working with Maia Financial we remove these barriers are able to assist our customer base with a streamlined financial approach that improves the end users cash flow as well as increased productivity and revenue streams. The Maia Financial team are great partners and have helped us deliver a number of solutions to our customers, in time frames previously unheard of, and I look forward to working with them on an ongoing basis.”

- Ben Williams, General Manager Sales, Smart Parking Ltd