At FTV Capital, we’ve witnessed time and time again how the rapid transition from cash to digital payments, coupled with the adoption of integrated software, can transform vertical markets. The global parking market is no exception; it’s a space where parking operators and consumers alike are increasingly adopting digital solutions to reduce payment friction, obtain greater visibility into inventory and enhance space utilization.
Across the parking ecosystem – which includes events venues, municipalities, universities and commercial lots – technology adoption has gained significant traction. Stadiums, concert halls and other high-volume event spaces are increasingly leveraging software and digital payments to streamline ingress and manage lot utilization, enhancing the attendee experience while driving enhanced revenue capture. Similarly, municipal and university parking operations are going digital to offer contactless payment options for parkers while improving analytics and enforcement capabilities. In commercial parking, operators are turning to digital reservations channels to improve inventory utilization amid rising lot vacancies resulting from the post-COVID hybrid work environment. Finally, across all parking venues, consumers are increasingly opting to find, book and pay for parking digitally, making it imperative that all parking operators have a parking reservations and mobile payments solution.
Against this backdrop, we’re thrilled to lead a strategic growth investment in ParkHub to support its merger with JustPark. The combination of these two category-leading businesses will create one end-to-end parking technology and payments platform to serve the entire parking ecosystem in North America and the United Kingdom.
We’ve been following ParkHub for over five years now, and we’ve continued to be impressed with its undeniable leadership within the events parking market. Leading North American events operators – including LiveNation, LSU, MetLife Stadium and SoFi Stadium – use ParkHub’s enterprise parking management software and payments platform to manage all aspects of their parking operations. ParkHub offers solutions for real-time inventory monitoring, guest management, attendant management, yield optimization, scheduling, predictive data analytics, centralized reporting and on-site payments via mobile POS devices. In our conversations with customers, we were struck by their overwhelmingly positive feedback on the platform’s reliability, ease-of-use, integrations and customer support, all of which become mission-critical elements for a high-velocity parking operator on the day of an event.
We’ve similarly been impressed with JustPark‘s market leadership within the rapidly growing UK parking reservations market. As parking operators and UK residents alike increasingly turn to digital channels to list and fill unused parking capacity, JustPark matches drivers with available car park capacity through its best-in-class app-based marketplace. The company has developed a robust ecosystem, which facilitates over two billion in parking transactions annually with over 13 million registered drivers and 45,000 parking space owners.
Both platforms have their own bright futures ahead, but we’re particularly excited about the opportunity to bring the two together to serve the entire parking market in North America and the UK.
In supporting this deal, we are also excited to once again partner with Jeff Shanahan, who we’ve known for many years since his days leading CardConnect. Over our investment period and with Jeff’s leadership we grew CardConnect 10x+, took the company public and ultimately sold the business to First Data. Jeff is a great leader with exceptional instincts and has strong domain experience in this market. Additionally, we’re looking forward to partnering again with the team at LLR Partners, with whom we’ve collaborated previously on several deals, including FleetOne and RapidRatings.
Finally, we look forward to bringing to bear the FTV platform, our vast network of relationships across North America and the UK, and our experience in successfully scaling vertical software and integrated payments businesses like Neon One, Ottimate, SingleOps, Vagaro and Xplor to help ParkHub + JustPark expand their offerings and empower their customers across the parking ecosystem.
