Taipei Councilor Slams Inconvenient Parking Fee Payment System

Taipei City Councilor Wang Hsin-yi has criticized the current system for paying roadside parking fees at convenience stores, deeming it an inconvenient and inefficient process that contradicts the city's push for digitalization and paperless transactions.

Many residents have complained that after receiving a roadside parking fee notice, which includes a QR code, they can no longer pay directly at the convenience store counter. Instead, they must first use self-service kiosks such as 7-ELEVEN's ibon or FamilyMart's FamiPort to look up and reprint the payment slip before proceeding to the cashier. This added step, Wang argues, unnecessarily complicates the process for citizens.

Wang pointed out that while the city aims to encourage electronic payments and reduce reliance on convenience stores, a significant number of people still opt for this method. Last year, approximately 28% of parking fees, totaling over 8 million payment slips, were paid through convenience stores. This figure includes many elderly individuals who are less comfortable with digital payments, prefer cash transactions, or are wary of potential fraud and data breaches.

"The city government hopes to guide citizens to use electronic payments, reduce the use of convenience store代收 services, save public funds, and offer a 5% discount as an incentive. But last year, nearly 28%, as high as 8.02 million, of parking fees were paid through convenience stores," Wang stated. She believes the current system, which requires printing an additional slip, is environmentally unfriendly and technologically backward, directly opposing the goal of paperless operations.

Liu Jui-lin, director of the Parking Management and Development Agency, explained that the new system requires linking to the server via QR code to calculate the exact fee before payment. He acknowledged the cost of integrating convenience store POS systems directly with the agency's servers and proposed developing a system where drivers can scan the QR code on their notice via their mobile phones to generate a convenience store payment barcode. This would streamline the process and reduce the need for extra printing steps.