New York might start accepting Apple Pay and Bitcoin for parking tickets

Being the most populous city in the United States and having some of the nation’s worst parking, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that New York City issues millions of parking tickets every year. While the city made things slightly more convenient for people by allowing parking tickets to be paid online, New York may be taking things a step further by accepting Apple Pay and Bitcoin.

The city of New York issues eight to ten million parking tickets annually. But great news: Drivers will soon be able to use their smartphones to pay their fines instantly with mobile apps or cryptocurrencies. The city’s finance department is looking into alternative payment methods like Apple Pay, PayPal and Bitcoin for the roughly $600 million in parking ticket revenue it collects annually by issuing up to 10 million tickets. There has been a proliferation of new mobile payment technologies in recent months, including Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay, which saw its share of the mobile payments market climb to 1.7% in just its first six weeks on the market.