In August, ParkHub closed on its most recent acquisition, fellow Dallas-based firm and payments integrator, Fuzse. Founded by Lane Conner, who joins ParkHub’s senior leadership team as President of Payments, Fuzse is known in the industry for its innovation and ability to drive partnerships that make sense for software developers.
We sat down with Lane to discuss the deeper meaning to ParkHub’s Fuzse purchase and what it means for the company moving forward.
ParkHub News: Let’s start at a higher level, Lane, and why payments as a capability is a priority for ParkHub’s future.
Lane Conner: George Baker and the team at LLR Partners are always looking for ways to increase ParkHub’s position as a market leader in software and other solutions with a greater emphasis on payments. Since implementing integrated payments a few years ago, the payments piece of ParkHub’s equation has become a significant revenue driver for the company. LLR has a history of investing in payments companies and has been a strong believer in the power of payments. ParkHub’s commitment to this area was a key driver in securing LLR’s investment earlier this year.
Bringing Fuzse in-house makes more sense for George and LLR’s larger strategy with payments moving forward.
ParkHub News: So, what appealed to you about coming onboard with ParkHub full-time?
Lane Conner: There’s a lot of personal affinity there between me and the leadership team at ParkHub. In addition to our professional work together, we’ve had a lot of synergy working together on philanthropic and public service projects in Dallas. I view my profession and service of equal importance, and to be able to maintain that on this team is huge for me personally.
But back to business–while I love launching and building companies, ParkHub is such a special opportunity, and coming onboard gives me the space to build out a payments team and help the company go even deeper into its portfolio of amazing clients. While ParkHub has made great strides in payments and is certainly a market leader in the parking solutions industry, we are only just beginning!
ParkHub News: Is the continued integration of payments simply about going deeper with existing customers or a value-add when the company adds new teams, franchises, or venues to its portfolio of customers?
Lane Conner: While that, in and of itself, justifies an emphasis on payments for ParkHub, integration with parking solutions is only the beginning. Payments is an ever-expanding and ever-changing industry, because the advance of technology happens at such a relentless pace. In my lifetime, we’ve gone from embossing credit cards with carbon copied paper to contactless payments and virtual wallets tied to your smartphone.
What this means is that our total addressable market becomes any business that takes credit cards. While we’ll continue to focus on our core competency of event parking, this opens us up to go into our customer base like we have with FC Dallas to do other types of payments for them, such as team store merchandise, alongside our parking technology innovations like non-attended parking.
ParkHub News: Final question–will having an in-house payments team drive new product offerings moving forward?
Lane Conner: Yes! We are developing new products as we go, and we are now poised for faster, more sophisticated integration with new acquisitions, such as CurbTrac. We will continue to look for better ways to monetize our customers through payments, such as pay for enforcement with municipalities and other entities.
The big takeaway here is that ParkHub is going deeper and wider: We are getting deeper into our customers, and we are expanding the way that we interact with the marketplace as a whole through payments.
About ParkHub
ParkHub is optimizing the world’s journeys by providing cutting-edge enterprise technology to support the parking industry. The company’s products offer contactless payment options, real-time operational data, robust performance analytics, and leading integrations with ticketing and parking reservation providers. For more information, visit parkhub.com.
Contact
Riese Rubin
Marketing Manager
info@parkhub.com
469.546.9760