Krista Murphy of HotSpot showcasing the app's new interface. Image: Submitted
HotSpot has given its app a big makeover, which introduces new features for things like taxi services, charitable donations and more.
The app, which has become a popular way conveniently pay for metered parking in cities in the Maritimes and across the country, officially launched on Monday to its 200,000 users. It’s the biggest update since HotSpot started six years ago.
“This is the first major revamp of the app,” said Krista Murphy, the marketing and communications lead for HotSpot. “It’s the biggest, most exciting with the most number of users involved currently in the app.”
Besides the overall makeover to its user interface, one of the biggest updates to the HotSpot platform is the addition of its taxi feature, which it’s currently piloting in Fredericton with ABC Taxi. Once the pilot is completed by the end of the year, the plan is to find taxi partners in the other cities they operate in.
With this feature, taxi companies will soon be able to partner with HotSpot to allow customers to do things like book a ride, track their cab, rate their drivers, pay through the app and more.
“Once you’re in the taxi you can pay through your HotSpot wallet,” says Murphy. “You can also pay with your credit card through Hotspot, but the wallet is an important feature that you can pre-load.”
Another feature HotSpot has launched is a new NFC tap system, which will allow users to enter participating gated parking lots. The new tap system is currently available at places like the Saint John Regional Hospital, Market Square, Peel Plaza, and the Charlottetown Airport.
“If you’re NFC enabled, you’d tap your phone on the tap sign and it starts your parking session, and when you’re done you tap and it ends your parking session,” said Murphy.
In addition, the company has also introduced real-time parking maps, which will allow users to find parking lots and spots within Hotspot partner cities. This may come in handy when users are in a city they are not familiar with.
“Let’s say you’re in Saint John and you’re a HotSpot user and you’re heading towards Moncton and you’re going to meet a client and you’re not quite sure where to park. You open up your app and on the parking page, there is a link that says, ‘find parking,’ ” said Murphy.
“You open that up, you select the city you’re going to, and it will actually show you a real-time Google map that will actually indicate where the lots are and for each lot it will also indicate how many spots are currently available.”
But the new feature that the company is most excited about is the ability for people to donate directly to a charity. Users now have the option to donate any change left over from their parking session to the local United Way for the city they are in.
“With the app, you can end your parking session and all you will be charged is the exact amount of minutes that you were parked and we’ll refund the unused portion of your parking session back to your HotSpot Wallet,” said Murphy. “But you can actually choose to have it donated to the local United Way in the city that you’re parked in.”
This feature will be completely optional for users.
“That’s a choice everybody gets to make,” said Murphy. “We don’t force it, but we definitely encourage it because it’s a way of giving back and it helps the local United Way build stronger, more prosperous communities.”
A version of this story was published in Huddle, an online business news publication based in Saint John. Huddle is an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
