passport
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The big new round of funding for Passport’s ticketing and parking management tech proves that software can even disrupt something as mundane and seemingly low-tech as the parking lot.
The startup, which just raised $65 million in new financing from investors, is a permitting, parking and ticketing management service for cities, office parks and campuses.
The capital commitment more than doubles the North Carolina-based startup’s funding to $125 million and is actually the second big investment round of the year for a parking tech company. SpotHero, the Chicago-based marketplace for parking, raised $50 million earlier in the year, and other services related to auto care and servicing in parking lots or on-demand have raised tens of millions of dollars as well.
“In the future, almost everyone in the world will live in a city, so there’s no more important challenge to work on than how people move throughout communities and transact with cities,” said Bob Youakim, Passport co-founder and chief executive, in a statement. “We envision a world where mobility is seamless. To bring this vision to life, we are creating an open ecosystem where any entity — a connected or autonomous vehicle, a mapping app, or a parking app — can leverage our transactional infrastructure to facilitate digital parking payments.”
Passport’s application interfaces allow any government to set up electronic payments for parking tickets and with mobile readers can scan licenses to check for permits and approvals that car owners have through the company’s management service.
With the close of the new round, Habib Kairouz from Rho Capital Partners and Scott Hilleboe from H.I.G. will both take seats on the company’s board of directors.
The company processes more than 100 million transactions per year and will see $1.5 billion pass through its system this year.
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BlackBerry could be about to become the most interesting company in the smartphone business: The Canadian telecommunications firm will deliver a minimum of one “unconventional device” per year, according to a new report from Reuters, following the launch of the square-screened Passport last week.
The Passport is definitely an outlier gadget, with its wide-bodied construction… Read More
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BlackBerry has missed expectations on revenue for Q2 2015, with $916 million in money coming in, which compares to $1.57 billion in the year-ago quarter. Analysts had predicted north of $940 million for the quarter. Expenses were down under Chen’s leadership, with R&D spend dropping from $360 million to $186 million. Sales, marketing and administration also dropped from $527 million… Read More
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BlackBerry previously gave us a sneak peek at a device that’s as category-busting as the revolutionary Padfone, called the Passport. I expressed my …uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the design decisions made in creating this 4.5-inch square thing with a hardware keyboard then. But now it’s BlackBerry’s turn to articulate some of its reasoning behind the Passport, with… Read More
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Just when you think you might have figured out what BlackBerry is up to (a strong push in enterprise services and emerging markets like the Internet of Things) they go and do something like the BlackBerry Passport.
The device broke cover today (via MobileSyrup) during the Canadian smartphone maker’s earnings call, and it’s set to be launched in September this year, following an… Read More
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