KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 6 — Run out of coins to pay for that parking bay? Not to worry.

At the start of the month, Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) began rolling out a new payment system for street parking in the city.

This means vehicle owners will no longer have to rummage through their pockets for spare change. Not to mention the pressure when you find out you don’t have sufficient coins.

How many times has that led you to skip paying for parking, only to constantly worry about the boys in dark blue writing you that ticket while you rush to get toothpaste or onions for your wife from the mini market?

Well, thanks to the brilliant minds in DBKL, payment can now be done at the tip of your fingers, via mobile applications and e-wallets that is.

Cliched, but who cares if you don’t have to bang your head against the wall in frustration because that parking machine just doesn’t work.

In a statement explaining the new policy, they’ve named EZ Smart Park, Flexi Parking, Wilayah Parking or M-Cash as the panel platforms. There’s also a plan to integrate Boost and Touch ‘n Go eWallets.

But apart from the last two apps, the rest are not exactly household names. So Malay Mail will try its best to give you a rundown on each of the apps below:

EZ Smart Park

According to its website, EZ Smart Park is an app designed to make your parking experience smooth and easy. The platform’s proprietor is Laureate System Solutions Sdn Bhd.

The application lets you "manage your car in the EZ Smart Park App and pay for parking easily” which can be done from anywhere.

Like an e-wallet, you can reload through in-application secure banking or credit card. The company promises secure payment, of course, with all your transactions recorded just in case you forgot and start wondering if you’ve spent on something you shouldn’t.

Come on, everyone’s been there.

Flexi Parking

Flexi Parking is pretty much the same but offers another service that users may find very convenient.

Remember the handful of city council compounds you got for being naughty because you parked in places you shouldn’t have?

Well, now you can be a good citizen and pay them online via the Flexi Parking app, without the exasperating hassle that comes with visiting the local council office.  

Not only that, the platform’s engineer, Leading Innovative Technologies and Systems (LiTS), is said to enable more features, including the use of advanced technology like license plate recognition (LPR) to make parking in gated facilities much easier.

With the LPR technology, LiTS said all drivers need to do is cruise into parking areas without having to fetch a ticket or use a touch access card, although that will only work if you register your vehicle plate number first with Flexi Parking, MPAJ Parking, Smart Selangor Parking and/or Wilayah Parking.

Which brings us to…

Wilayah Parking

This particular application is a bit of a mystery but it’s designed by the same people at LiTS.

In the description page on Google Play, the platform is described as a parking payment application for all on-street and off-street parking bays belonging to DBKL and city councils within Selangor.

The list of city councils that the application supports for now include the municipalities of Sepang, Shah Alam, Ampang, Kajang, and Petaling Jaya.

Its most notable feature would be users’ ability to pay for multiple vehicles at different councils at the same time. And like Flexi Parking, users can also use the Wilayah Parking app to pay fines by any of the Selangor municipal councils listed above directly.

But based on the reviews on Google Play, the app isn’t exactly the most user-friendly. You’ll find users complaining about the interface being confusing. The app also has no customer service to address complaints.

MCash

Well, MCash operates just like your standard e-wallet. Next to the usual services most e-wallets have, they offer online parking payment through a platform that’s integrated in the wallet.

The platform also supports compound/fine payment to DBKL and the Selangor municipal councils listed above.

MCash was launched in 2016 and considers itself one of the local e-wallet pioneering players in the country.