Funding fuels company vision for an open mobility ecosystem for cities
Charlotte, N.C. (Dec. 10, 2019) — Passport, the leading mobility management platform, has closed a $65M Series D funding round, led by Rho Capital Partners, with participation from H.I.G. Growth Partners and ThornTree Capital Partners. These new investors join existing Passport investors Bain Capital Ventures, MK Capital, Grotech Ventures, and Relevance Capital. To date, Passport has raised a total of $125M. The new capital will be invested in growing Passport’s mobility software platform and expanding the mobility ecosystem to enable digital parking payments outside of traditional parking apps.
“In the future, almost everyone in the world will live in a city, so there’s no more important challenge to work on than how people move throughout communities and transact with cities,” said Bob Youakim, Passport co-founder and CEO. “We envision a world where mobility is seamless. To bring this vision to life, we are creating an open ecosystem where any entity – a connected or autonomous vehicle, a mapping app, or a parking app – can leverage our transactional infrastructure to facilitate digital parking payments.”
This represents a major shift in the parking industry, which has been focused on building one-size-fits-all applications. Now, Passport can help cities take control of the curb, optimize mobility and create an interface between the city’s infrastructure and vehicles. In the coming months, Passport will be onboarding and announcing partners who are leveraging its APIs to facilitate parking payments.
As we expand the ecosystem, cities will be able to offer parking payments through a number of apps and experiences:
- Mapping and wayfinding services: More than 75% of smartphone owners regularly use a mapping app to navigate to their destination, which often ends with parking a car in an on-street or off-street parking spot. Passport can integrate with these services to enable parking payments directly in a wayfinding app.
- In-car payments: With the rise of connected and autonomous vehicles, in-car payments are the next big thing in the automotive industry. With Passport’s APIs, OEMs can natively integrate parking payments into connected cars.
- Lifestyle apps: Passport wants parking to be the simplest part of a person’s day. By leveraging our APIs, users can pay to park through an app where they order their morning coffee or sign-up for a fitness class.
- Parking apps: User-centric parking payment apps such as PayByPhone can be enabled through Passport’s platform to give more choice to users. PayByPhone is currently integrating into our platform in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The concept of an open ecosystem is one part of the solution for creating an easy-to-manage, efficient mobility operation for the future. Passport’s mobility management platform enables cities to:
- Manage rules and rates for the curb in a central hub
- Rely less on specific point solutions like hardware or individual parking apps
- Digitalize parking and facilitate payments at scale
- Easily enable new technologies on demand
- Provide a frictionless experience for transacting with transportation services
- View real-time, ecosystem-wide activity and reports
- Standardize payments flow to ensure control of your funds
With the close of the Series D round, Habib Kairouz from Rho Capital Partners will be joining Passport’s board of directors, along with Scott Hilleboe from H.I.G.
“Over the past decade, Passport has cemented itself as a leader in mobility technology and municipal payments,” said Kairouz, managing partner at Rho Capital Partners. “We see great potential in what the company can achieve in the next ten years as it facilitates partnerships that will further improve how people move around cities.”
“Passport is uniquely positioned to transform urban mobility and how cities interact with their residents,” said Scott Hilleboe, managing director at H.I.G. Growth Partners. “We believe Passport’s technology platform at the epicenter of mobility, payments, and smart cities will enable the company to be a leader in the digitization of our cities. We are excited about our opportunity to support the company as it continues its significant growth.”
Passport serves nearly 1,000 clients worldwide, helping them to solve mobility challenges with solutions for parking, enforcement, permits, transit, and micro-mobility. Passport processes more than 100 million curbside transactions each year, resulting in more than $1.5 billion processed to date. This year, Passport was named to the Inc. 5000 and Deloitte Technology Fast 500 lists for the second year in a row.
About Passport
Passport is transforming mobility management for cities, empowering them to create more livable and equitable communities. Passport’s mobility platform enables clients to digitally coordinate all modes of transportation and implement real-time, data-centric management of their curbside and streetspace through its enterprise software. Trusted by nearly 1,000 cities, universities and agencies, including Chicago, Toronto, London, Los Angeles, and Miami, Passport is one of the fastest growing companies on the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Technology Fast 500 lists. Passport is backed by Bain Capital Ventures, MK Capital, Grotech Ventures, and Relevance Capital. For more information, visit passportinc.com.