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7 min read
Key takeaways
- HONK aimed to streamline digital payment acceptance and collection for parking by replacing physical hardware with easy-to-use payment software.
- Chase and J.P. Morgan’s embedded banking and end-to-end e-commerce solution ensures that all payment methods are uniformly accepted through HONK’s platform.
- As a result, customer satisfaction has increased, operators see decreased capital expenditure and operating costs, and HONK has created an additional revenue stream from payment processing.
About
HONK is a North American provider of unattended payment solutions for parking and mobility. Since 2013, HONK has been developing vertically integrated software solutions that make paying for parking simpler and faster for drivers while making parking operations more efficient and profitable for real estate owners. HONK is used by millions of drivers at more than 10,000 locations across the United States and Canada.
SalonCentric is the B2B distribution arm for L'Oreal USA, and we service over 1 million salon professionals in the beauty community.
SalonCentric needed a way to facilitate online payments without managing fund flows for third-party seller settlements. They wanted to make it as easy as possible for users to buy and sell products on the platform while keeping payments and banking information secure. JPMorgan created a sponsored account solution that processes transactions and settles funds. Visitors to SalonCentric's online marketplace make purchases that are processed by JPMorgan.
Funds are taken from the purchaser and settled into JPMorgan-sponsored account. This keeps SalonCentric out of the flow of funds. From there, L'Oreal shares first-party and third-party fund settlement information with JPMorgan via state-of-the-art APIs. This information is stored by JPMorgan rather than by SalonCentric, dramatically reducing information security risks. Once settlement instructions are received, JPMorgan settles the indicated amount from the sponsored account to first-party and third-party accounts.
The marketplace project was highly complex, and it required a multitude of stakeholders across the organization. And the partnership with JPMorgan was critical to bringing this project to life.
Now, SalonCentric is one of the largest B2B e-commerce platforms in the professional beauty industry. They even earned a commendation at the 2022 Adam Smith Awards for Best Transaction Management Solution. At JPMorgan, we're building innovative solutions now to scale for your future. Explore the possibilities.
The challenge
For too long, mobile payment for parking was all over the map. Different parking operators accepted different payment methods and virtual payment methods like Apple Pay and Google Pay were generally not among them. Paying by phone required the cumbersome steps of downloading an app, registering an account, and manually entering card details, which often had to be re-entered at each parking location. On the other side, operators needed standardized payment acceptance, guaranteed next-day deposits, and branding on cardholders’ statements.
With mobile payments tied to apps that could not address the needs of all drivers, adoption of mobile parking payments was plateauing. Since physical payment terminals were considered more convenient, hardware was still responsible for the majority of parking payment volume. This led to increased operating costs, higher capital expenditures and slower processing times for parking operators.

The solution
HONK set out to challenge the status quo and streamline digital payment acceptance by replacing physical hardware with easy-to-use payment software. HONK invented the parking industry’s first app-free, guest checkout solution – HonkTAP – where parkers could pay with a single tap of their phone. When parking operators can simultaneously offer drivers a quick and easy way to pay for parking on their phone, while cutting down on capital and operating costs incurred by traditional physical terminals, everyone in the parking ecosystem leaves happy.
HONK turned to Chase and J.P. Morgan’s embedded payments solutions to further transform its payment process. HONK can now offer parking operators their own merchant account that accepts payments from virtual wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, as well as payments via Interac, Canada’s first electronic payment network1. The integration of this end-to-end e-commerce solution with the HONK platform ensures all payment methods are uniformly accepted through one token vault, regardless of where users park or how they pay.
All payment pieces are now contained in a user-friendly solution that gives operators complete control over payment acceptance and speeds up cash flow to a next-day settlement cycle. Each merchant account includes the operator’s branding on cardholder statements, daily deposits, and the ability to accept all digital forms of payment.

The results
Now that Chase and J.P. Morgan’s e-commerce solution is incorporated into the HONK platform, parking operators are enjoying many direct benefits, such as:
There are valuable rewards for HONK as well, including:
To learn more about how we can support your business, please contact your J.P. Morgan representative.