Seamless Journeys and the Next Evolution of Mobility
Most of us start the day the same way. We reach for our phone. In fact, research shows more than 7 in 10 use their smartphone as soon as they wake up, and 74% of people in the US say they would rather forget their wallet than their phone for a day. The phone has become our alarm clock, our map, our news feed, our calendar, and increasingly, the tool we use as we move through the day. We use it to park, find parking spaces, book rides, catch trains, unlock scooters, and locate charging points. Digital services have helped to remove many old frustrations: coins, paper tickets, queues. That is real progress.
Yet even as digital services have helped increased convenience, city journeys are still not always seamless.
The Journey Works, But It Does Not Flow
Most of us move through cities in steps. Drive. Park. Transfer. Ride. Walk. Switch again. Each step often has its own app, its own account, and its own payment method. Nothing is truly joined up.
Cities feel this challenge too. Urban mobility systems today are often disconnected, with services delivered across different modes and providers, resulting in fragmented user experiences.
A key barrier to a smoother experience is that payment systems are often not interoperable, meaning travelers must manage separate accounts, apps, and transactions across a single journey and cities needing to reconcile transactions across multiple vendors and systems. This is not a technology problem, we just do not have the right connections yet.
The Direction Is Clear: Connected Mobility Payments
Travellers want one journey, not five separate transactions. Cities want systems that work together. And operators want simplicity, insight, and the ability to serve travellers better.
At PayByPhone, we have seen this shift through our work in digital parking over the past several years. These days, parking rarely stands alone. It links to transit services, shared mobility, EV charging, workplace commuting, and everyday travel. The journey is already connected in real life. The payment experience has simply not caught up fully yet.
Linking those payments is our focus, but we want to go even further...
From Digital Convenience to Invisible Simplicity
Across mobility, a new pattern is forming:
• Mobility platforms are opening up
• Vehicles are gaining built-in payment capability
• Sensors and smart infrastructure can recognize arrival and departure
• Cloud services can settle movement across providers quietly in the background
And the goal is not just one app for everything. The ultimate goal is for the technology to fade into the background.
Imagine a journey where:
• You park and payment simply begins
• You unplug your EV and the session settles instantly
• You move, and the system keeps up
The journey flows, but the phone stays in your pocket. That is the journey we are imagining.
What This Means For PayByPhone
As mobility evolves, the role of the phone may shift from the foreground to the background. That does not replace what came before. It builds on it. Whether the traveller taps to pay or the vehicle pays automatically, the phone remains the secure anchor of the relationship.
We have spent more than 20 years helping to simplify parking payments. That foundation matters. It means we are able to understand how cities operate, how people travel, and how payment systems behave in the real world.
Today we are working with cities and partners on new connected mobility projects that build on that foundation. The name PayByPhone reflects where the journey started. The direction we are heading reflects where mobility is going.
This Future Requires Collaboration
No single organization will create seamless mobility on its own. It will take partnerships between cities and public authorities, shared mobility operators and technology platforms that connect systems rather than replace them. And seamless mobility should not feel technical. It should simply feel easy. When payments connect seamlessly, the journey becomes the focus.
Our purpose is to simplify journeys so people can focus on what matters. Now our ambition is to help make mobility payments simple too - across every journey, with every partner, in every city we serve.
Sources:
https://www.deloitte.com/ie/en/about/press-room/consumer-trends-smartphone-usage.html
https://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2018/33446/would-consumers-rather-lose-their-phones-or-their-wallets