Kakao expands partnerships for parking lot service

By Yoon Sung-won

Kakao said Wednesday it is expanding partnerships with parking lot facility operators to share parking management technologies for the mobile parking assistance service Kakao Parking.

The provider of the nation’s most-used mobile messenger platform Kakao Talk is preparing to roll out Kakao Parking as part of its online-to-offline (O2O) business within the year. The mobile application service is designed to search for nearby available parking lots and provide a convenient instant payment system for smartphones, the company said.

“As we have established partnerships with our rich experience and knowhow in parking control systems, we will seek close collaboration with more diverse partners to launch Kakao Parking,” Kakao’s O2O business division head John Jung said in a statement.

Kakao said it has signed an agreement with four parking lot equipment providers _ Amano Korea, Darae Parktech, Tomato Electronics and Dae Young Industry Electric _ at the company’s office in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province, Wednesday, to cooperate in realizing an automatic parking control system for the Kakao Parking service. The four partners are specialized in smart parking control technologies such as license plate recognition (LPR) and automatic breaker systems.

Under the collaboration, the parking lot system providers and Kakao will synchronize the systems with the mobile service to allow consumers to use affiliated parking lots without directly interacting with parking lot managers or management systems.

“Parking lots which have already introduced the LPR technology from one of our four system-providing partners can benefit from the system synchronization service without extra expenses,” Kakao said. “We will continue to expand our cooperation with more diverse partnerships such as parking lot operating businesses to improve the Kakao Parking service.”