Parking machines in Tauranga and Mount Maunganui are being upgraded to a paperless system.

Transportation manager Martin Parkes says that the banking industry requires Tauranga City Council to upgrade the credit card function on all parking machines.

'The upgrade is essential to keep the machines functioning. We're taking the opportunity to future-proof the machines at the same time by making them paperless,” says Martin.

Once upgraded, the machines will no longer issue paper tickets for dashboard display.

Customers will instead be asked to enter their licence plate number when paying at the machines.

Parking officers can check each vehicle's parking status by its licence plate, a system that is already being used with the PayMyPark app.

Martin says that shifting to the paperless system will save people the hassle of returning to their vehicle to display a ticket.

'You will be able to pay and walk away without going back to the car. You will need to know your licence plate number or have it written down.”

Technicians began converting the first machines in Devonport Road on Saturday, and it will take about two weeks to change all of the machines to the ‘pay by plate' system.

The total number of parking machines in the city will reduce from 153 to 110.

'People won't have to return to their cars to display tickets, so we can increase the distance between each on-street parking machine,'” says Martin.

"The paperless system will also save the council a lot of maintenance." E-receipts are available with the new system.

Customers can also choose to pay usig the PayMyPark app, free to download from the Google Play Store and the App Store.

Bylaws and Parking team leader Stuart Goodman says that PayMyPark had grown in popularity since it was introduced last year.

'Building on the success of PayMyPark, we're looking forward to the whole system going paperless.

It will be more efficient for our records and enable us to verify customer queries quickly and accurately.”

The paperless upgrade was due to start in April but was put on hold for a few months to allow wording in the Traffic and Parking Bylaw (2012) to be updated.