Sector : FinTech
Solution : Data aggregation

Open banking use case: bank account aggregation for the Swave application. Boosting Local Economy & City Circulation with Free Parking 

Setting up the challenge

1. Lots of shoppers and merchants complain that parking is expensive in the city of Kortrijk, including the shopping center in the city. Whilst another shopping center outside the city pulls people with free parking.
2. People often endlessly drive around through the city in the search of parking spot above ground.
3. Previous manual solutions to offer people free parking when they actually buy at merchants in the city, proved to be too cumbersome and time-consuming for all parties involved: the city, merchants and consumers.

Key project milestones for harnessing real-time payment insights for refunds:

1. Capitalizing on Open Banking and PSD2 advancements, Swave engineered a solution where people can connect their bank account. From the moment they do so, Swave tracks where, when and how much they spend – including at which parkings – so that people can now be rewarded simply while they pay cashless.
2. On the merchant side, the system doesn’t require any integrations nor manual efforts by cashiers. Key factors to convince a maximum of merchants to participate
3. With the click of a button, the city can now run free parking campaigns across the city. The first time, the city chose to reimburse people’s parking if they spend a cumulative minimum of 75 EUR across 250+ merchants in the city ánd parked underground, during one and the same day. The second time, people got their parking reimbursed when they had spent 50 EUR. A third and fourth campaign will be launched in the coming months.

Achieved results : the Triple Win:

1. Consumers greatly appreciate having their parking reimbursed when they spend money in the city. A system through which they have only to have to download an app once to then always be rewarded simply while they pay cashless, proves to be an unprecedented, almost magical convenience.
2. The city witnessed a boost in local spending during both campaigns. The data and customer feedback showed people from far away explicitly visited the city because of free parking and people spend that little bit more in the city center, at different shops stimulating cross-merchant shopping behavior.
3. The city received positive feedback in the press ánd from the merchants, who loved how easy the process went. It’s the reason all large merchants from the shopping center in the city wanted to participate the second time.

The results