Passport raises $8 million to help cities offer pay-by-mobile parking, transit

Passport Inc. raised $8 million in a Series B round of funding to help cities make parking and transportation systems easier for people to use, and harder for them to abuse.

MK Capital led the investment in Passport, joined by Grotech Ventures and Relevance Capital. The new round brings Passport’s total capital raised to $17 million.

The Charlotte, North Carolina startup provides the cloud-based software behind city transit and parking apps including: ParkBoston, ParkChicago, Toronto’s Green P Parking app,GoTuscon, and others across the U.S. and in Canada.

Among other thing, Passport-powered apps let users pay for parking with their phones instead of with a credit card swipe or quarters at the meter, apply for and attain parking permits, buy mobile tickets or passes for trains and buses, and pay off their parking tickets or other citations by phone.

On the back-end, the apps help city offices and employees share real-time data about what’s happening within their various transit and parking systems, and make decisions about where to dedicate more law enforcement, other personnel, money and resources.

According to CEO Bob Youakim, the startup was cashflow positive before raising the Series B round.

He said Passport would use its capital for hiring, international expansion beyond North America, and to add to the feature set of Passport’s apps. But he declined to disclose what, specifically, is in the works.

Apps to help cities adapt as autonomous vehicles hit the road are a long-term possibility, he said.

Competitors to Passport include other venture-backed, enterprise tech providers to cities and their transportation-related offices, such as Transloc, Masabi or SilverRail Technologies, along with larger tech companies that have long been playing in the “smart cities” space with a focus on transportation such as IBM or Xerox.

Apple Pay comes to Singapore

SINGAPORE — Apple has launched Apple Pay in Singapore, but it's just for American Express-issued cards for now.

The company announced Tuesday the mobile payment service has gone live here, becoming the sixth country after the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and China to have it. Amex confirmed in October last year it will follow with Hong Kong and Spain to roll out Apple Pay there within the year.

For now, only American Express-issued cards will work, and American Express cards from other banks like DBS Bank, UOB and Standard Chartered will start getting accepted "soon," says Apple's site.

Users can also expect Visa to be onboarded, but Apple wouldn't say exactly when this would be.

Apple Pay works with the Apple Watch, iPhone 6, iPad Air 2, iPad Pro and iPad Mini 3, and is compatible with existing contactless payment terminals in stores.

Like other tap-to-pay modes such as Visa PayWave and MasterCard's PayPass, Apple Pay transactions are capped at S$100 ($75) each.

The Apple Pay service first debuted in the U.S. in October 2016 

Is Amex-only crippling the service?

Apple Pay's Amex-only debut in Singapore echoes its operations in Australia, where it only works on Amex, and with none of Australia's big four banks.

That's proven to be a bit of a crippling factor Down Under, as Mashable experienced for itself.

Avoiding that, Apple went a much broader route in China for its February debut in the important market, which is the world's largest smartphone base. It tied up with the country's sole interbank network, China UnionPay, allowing access to the vast majority of cards in the country.

It worked; the first day of Apple Pay in China proved so popular that the service couldn't accommodate everyone jumping on, and Apple said it had to stagger the number of sign-ons. According to Apple, 3 million cards were added in the first 72 hours of the service going live in the country.

Given that Amex has a far lower penetration rate in here compared with Visa and MasterCard, it's not likely that Singapore will experience anything close to that rush of sign-ups.

According to data from research firm IDC Asia-Pacific, Amex is estimated to be on fewer than 5% of the total credit and debit cards in circulation in Singapore. Merchants are generally less keen to support Amex as well, because its fees are known to be higher than that of the competition.

Chris Anderson, head of mobility at research firm IDC Asia-Pacific, told Mashable: "I'm not convinced (the Amex launch) will lead to an influx of applications for Amex cards in Singapore, since customers know that other options will be available soon."