Scan, pay, walk away: how Parkso is making parking friction-free Interview with Parkso | Parkex 2026
For anyone who's never heard of Parkso, what's the one-line pitch?
Pay for parking on your phone without having to download another parking app. No downloads, no passwords, no registration. Simply scan, pay, and walk away.
The tagline is "traditional car parking apps suck". What frustrations were you seeing in the market that led you to build Parkso?
When I was stood in the middle of a car park in North Norfolk in the pouring rain waiting for a parking app to download on a very slow 4g connection, I thought to myself, “surely this doesn’t have to be so difficult”. After having this rant with many other people, it seems that this feeling is universal. That’s the frustration we’re trying to fix.
You've removed the need to download an app or register an account. How does the QR code payment journey actually work for a driver from start to finish?
It’s genuinely three steps. The driver scans the QR code on the signage with their phone camera, which takes them straight to the operator’s branded payment page in the browser. They enter their registration, pick how long they want to stay, and pay with Apple Pay, Google Pay, or card. They get a confirmation, and that’s it.
You mention set-up takes less than an hour and there's no setup fee. What does the onboarding process look like for a car park operator?
We’ve deliberately kept it simple because operators have told us repeatedly that onboarding with the bigger providers can take weeks. With Parkso, we have a short onboarding call to capture the essentials – site details, tariffs, operating hours, any grace periods, VAT status, how they want payouts handled – and then we configure everything on our side.
The operator gets a branded QR code for their signage. If they want help with signage design and print, we can arrange that at cost. Once the signs are up, the site is live. That’s it – no hardware to install, no integration work, nothing to maintain.
We don’t charge a setup fee because we’re only successful if our operators are successful. Putting a barrier in front of that doesn’t make sense.
Parkso works for both public and private car parks. Are there particular sectors or use cases where you're seeing the strongest demand?
The strongest demand has come from destination and visitor sites – places where a large share of drivers are first-time or occasional visitors. Tourist attractions, heritage sites, rural visitor car parks, event venues, places of worship. These operators have been burned by app-only systems because their visitors are exactly the people who don’t already have the app and won’t download one.
A good example is Snowdon Mountain Railway. It’s a fifty-space site, and we’re processing over five hundred transactions a week from it with around ninety-five per cent adoption vs the coin machines which are still there. That kind of uptake is almost unheard of in cashless parking, and it’s because the barrier to pay is so low.
How do operators manage their car parks through Parkso? What does the back-end or management side look like?
Operators get a web-based dashboard where they can see everything in real time – live sessions, revenue, transaction history, which vehicles are currently parked, stay durations, extensions, refunds. It’s all searchable by registration, which is the bit enforcement teams care about most.
Because it’s all browser-based, they can manage the site from a laptop, a tablet, or a phone. There’s no desktop software to install and no IT overhead.
We can also send live data to any existing platform such as parking ops suite or CRM free of charge, helping operators keep all their data in one location.
Enforcement is always a challenge in cashless parking. How does Parkso support operators when it comes to checking compliance?
Enforcement teams can look up any vehicle registration on our platform and instantly see whether there’s a valid, active session for it – start time, end time, and how much time is remaining. It works on whatever device the patroller is already carrying.
We’ve designed the lookup to be fast because we know patrollers are working to a pace. No logging in to a separate system, no waiting for data to sync. And because everything is timestamped and audit-logged, if a ticket ever gets challenged the evidence is there.
We can also work with operators who use ANPR and third-party enforcement providers. Our data feed plugs into those workflows, so operators aren’t having to choose between Parkso and their existing enforcement setup.
With no processing fees and flexible pricing, how does your commercial model work? What are operators actually paying for?
It’s deliberately transparent. We handle the payment processing, the card fees, the chargebacks, the PCI compliance – all the infrastructure around taking money – and we take a commission on each transaction. That’s it.
There’s no setup fee, no monthly subscription, no per-site charge, no minimums. If nobody parks, the operator doesn’t pay anything. If the site is busy, our incentives are aligned – we only do well when they do well.
We also offer a hybrid model where the driver pays a small convenience fee on top of the parking tariff, which some operators prefer because it keeps their headline price unchanged. It’s genuinely flexible – we work with the operator to structure it in whatever way suits their site and their customers best.
What's been the biggest piece of feedback you've had from drivers who've used Parkso for the first time?
The most common reaction is something like “oh – is that it?”. People brace themselves for the usual app-download ordeal, and when it doesn’t happen they’re almost suspicious. One of our customers left a review saying the online payment and extension were “super smooth via the web link” and that they could pay with Apple Pay – and that’s the bar we’re aiming for. Parking should be boring.
The other thing that comes up a lot is how we handle the edge cases. One reviewer recently mentioned that they were four or five minutes late back to their car and we didn’t overcharge them – they said most operators would have taken the money and cited policy. We don’t do that. If someone’s a few minutes over because they got stuck in a queue for coffee, penalising them is the kind of thing that turns a good day into a bad one and loses the operator a repeat customer.
And because there’s no app and no account, when drivers do need help they just email us directly. A recent Trustpilot review mentioned that I replied personally when they were worried after accidentally using the wrong vehicle registration for their ticket. That’s still how we run support – it’s a small team, we answer quickly, and drivers talk to a human. Between the frictionless pay journey, the fairness on timing, and the fact that real people pick up the phone, we’re seeing drivers actively prefer parking at Parkso sites. That’s the feedback that matters most.
You're exhibiting at Parkex 2026. What are you hoping to get out of the show, and who should come and find you on the stand?
Parkex is the room where the UK parking sector actually gathers, so for us it’s about having real conversations with operators who are frustrated with their current setup and curious about what a genuinely friction-free alternative looks like.
We’d love to meet car park operators of any size – whether you’re running one site or a hundred – particularly if you’re dealing with low adoption on your current app-based system, visitor complaints, or contracts you’re looking to move away from. We’re also keen to speak with landowners who’ve been holding off on paid parking because the existing options felt too heavyweight, and with enforcement and ANPR partners who want to integrate with a modern, browser-first payment platform.
If you’ve ever stood in a car park cursing an app download, we’re the people you want to meet. So come and see us on the stand – we’ll have a live demo running and we’d love to make parking so much easier for your visitors.