Phillip Curley envisions a single smartphone app that can assist with transport by various means in cities across Atlantic Canada.

In fact, his company HotSpot Parking is working on such a thing, and took a big step toward it this week when the Moncton city council approved a one-year pilot to let transit users in the city pay for bus tickets with the HotSpot app.

The four-year-old Fredericton company’s app already lets users pay for parking in Charlottetown, Saint John, Fredericton and Moncton. It recently expanded to the Saint John airport, its first airport. And it will apply to provide the parking service in Halifax, now that that city has asked for proposals for online mobile parking payment service.

In an interview this week, Curley spelled out his vision for a pan-Atlantic Canadian mobile product that could help people use different modes of transportation throughout the region.

“We feel that Atlantic Canada has different needs than some of the other locations and we feel we have the ability to meet these needs,” said Curley. “We’re really looking at Atlantic Canada. Halifax does have an RFP out and we will be competing because we think we can do a really good job.”

Curley said HotSpot has been contacted over the years by merchants and others in Halifax encouraging the company to spread to the Nova Scotian capital.

NB Outlines Innovation Expenditures over Four Years

HotSpot started in 2013 with technology that 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.

Then Curley and his team have advanced their system so it produces invaluable data for businesses. Merchants can 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.

HotSpot provides its service free to municipalities, and individuals pay $2 a month to use the service. Curley is now watching how the service unfolds in Moncton in the hopes that existing parking customers will have a convenient way to pay for transit and may take the bus more. It can also collect data to tell transit authorities whether, for example, the buses are going near people’s final destinations.

About two years ago, HotSpot announced a partnership with an American company to roll out the product in major cities. Curley said that partnership is no longer in place. He also said HotSpot is not raising capital because outside investment would create pressure to expand geographically.

The company is now focused a pan-Atlantic product that meet the needs of people across the region, and applying the data it collects to improve transportation in Atlantic Canadian municipalities. Curly noted in the interview that 30 percent of HotSpot’s clients use the app in cities other than their hometown.

“We’re doing this because New Brunswick deserves a solution that’s properly bilingual,” Curley said in a Facebook post this week. “Nova Scotia deserves a system that is regionally accepted, (and) PEI needs to have excellent customer support. … Newfoundland and Labrador is a place everyone should visit and mobility cannot be an issue. This is our home and when we think regionally all boats rise with the tide.”