HotSpot Parking is moving into the U.S. in partnership with Charlotte, N.C.-based mobile payments specialist Passport – a move that will soon increase HotSpot’s accessible market by 100 times.

The Fredericton startup announced Tuesday that it has struck a partnership with Passport under which the North Carolina company will use Hotspot’s technology to link merchants in with the Passport mobile payments system. 

The two companies will launch their joint product in Ashville, N.C., which has a population of about 90,000. Following that, HotSpot and Passport will launch products in four major cities, each with a population of more than 4 million people.  This move into some of the world’s largest parking markets will expand HotSpot’s accessible market by about 100 times.

Operating under the brand name Hotspot Merchant Solutions, the New Brunswick company’s product will be an add-on to an existing Passport solution.

HotSpot seems to have been on a roll since Founder and CEO Phillip Curley took his idea through a Startup Weekend in Fredericton just 25 months ago.  

The graduate of the PropelICT and ACcelr8 accelerators had raised equity investment from BDC Capital and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, and a grant from the New Brunswick government announced by Premier Brian Gallant. It now operates in Fredericton, Saint John, Moncton and Charlottetown, and has about a 30 percent penetration rate in each. If that’s not enough, the company’s COO  Erin Flood was just accepted into the TechWomen Canada event in San Francisco next month.

“Our ability to partner so closely with the Atlantic Canadian cities made this innovation possible and now we’ve created a solution the entire world wants,” said Curley in a statement. “We’re happy to build a business in Atlantic Canada that will serve major world metropolitans.”

The HotSpot technology allows the remote payment of parking meters. Drivers can feed the meter without interrupting their shopping or meetings. Or merchants can use a cellphone to pay a customer’s parking, rather than have the customer run out of the store to feed the meter and never return.

What’s special about the Hotspot product, and what Passport is interested in, is that it produces invaluable data for downtown businesses. Hotspot allows these businesses to advertise directly to customers through their cellphones. And because of the geolocation capabilities of cellphones, the company can track how many people respond to their ads, who returns and who spends money.

Passport provides online payment systems specializing in parking and transit. The company has raised US$7.5 million in investment, has satellite offices in Barcelona and Bangalore, and operates in more than 1,000 locations, including Chicago, Toronto and Boston. The company announced this morning that its revenues in the first quarter of 2015 from the previous quarter. 

In a phone conversation Tuesday, Curley declined to answer questions about the company’s financing plans.