Parkmobile, a US-based provider of parking payment services, has raised $6.3m from a consortium including Fontinalis Partners, a venture capital firm that acts as an early-stage window for car maker Ford.
BCD Holdings, a Netherlands-based travel conglomerate founded in 1975 by John Fentener van Vlissingen and now with $22bn in annual revenues, and VC firm Bluefield Investments joined Fontinalis in the round. BCD on its website describes Parkmobile as one of its seven subsidiaries.
Ralph Booth, founding partner of Fontinalis, which was also co-founded by Bill Ford, chairman of his eponymous car maker, said: “We are very pleased with the continuing progress that Cherie [Fuzzell, chief executive of Parkmobile since November,] and her team have been able to accomplish in expanding our customer base and improving efficiencies.”
Fontinalis describes itself as “a strategic investor in transportation technology companies” and has also invested in Zagster, a company that provides bicycle-sharing and rentals; Everyday Solutions, which makes GPS systems to improve the efficiency of school bus transportation and merged with Synovia; QuickPay, a mobile payments company capable of interacting with legacy transportation infrastructure; Wheelz, a mobile and web-enabled peer-to-peer car sharing company; SQLstream, which allows customers to analyse real-time data on trafficpat-terns; and Streetline, which uses sensors to track parking spaces in cities and won technology provider IBM’s Smart-Camp award.