WeChat Pay launches auto scan-and-pay for parking in China’s shopping malls

Tencent Holdings on Wednesday introduced an automated payment system for car parks across China, as part of the company’s sharpened focus on businesses related to the industrial internet.

The Shenzhen-based internet giant said the system, set up under its WeChat Pay operation, has been rolled out to more than 1,000 car parks nationwide, including in major shopping malls, railway stations and airports.

To be part of this system, car owners must register their plate numbers under their WeChat Pay accounts. Their plates are scanned by specially set-up cameras located at the exit points of car parking sites. The artificial intelligence-based system automatically matches the captured image of the plate number with a database of WeChat Pay users to determine the corresponding account and settle the parking fees.

The initial deployment of the so-called pay-by-plate service at Coastal City, a major shopping and office complex in the Nanshan district of Shenzhen, has already resulted in faster payment processing and exit time for vehicles to an average of two seconds, compared with 20 seconds before, according to Tencent.

“QR code scanning is no longer required under this system,” Wang Yuxi, the operations director of WeChat Pay, said on Wednesday in Shenzhen. “The payment can be processed even when the drivers’ phones are out of power or the signal is weak in underground car parks.”