Toll Insight spoke with Tyler Williams, Business Development Executive at PayNearMe.
Who is PayNearMe, and what problems do you solve for the tolling industry?
PayNearMe is a Silicon Valley fintech company that focuses on solving its clients' biggest payment challenges to lower the total cost of accepting payments. Our payments platform increases acceptance rates, drives self-service, and simplifies the management of exceptions such as fraudulent payments, chargebacks, and returns. With PayNearMe, toll payments become seamless for both drivers and agencies. The platform handles the entire payment experience, enabling the acceptance of all major payment types—digital, mobile, or cash—through user-friendly channels, all via one simple integration.
I began working with toll authorities in 2022, and by 2023, tolling became my primary focus. From the start, it was clear that PayNearMe could bring meaningful improvements to the industry by streamlining payments management for toll operators and their collections teams.
Before this transition, I worked with our lending clients, where I saw firsthand how PayNearMe helped boost on-time payments and drive revenue growth. Now, I’m seeing that same success carry over to our growing list of tolling clients—helping them simplify payments, reduce leakage, and improve collections.
As we continue expanding in tolling, I’m excited to see the impact our platform is making. We’ll be at the IBTTA Technology Summit and we’re looking forward to connecting with industry leaders, exploring payment challenges, and sharing how we can help solve them.
What benefits and challenges come along with the shift to All Electronic Tolling (AET)?
AET offers numerous benefits, including simplifying toll collection, reducing congestion, and improving highway safety. However, that doesn’t make AET immune to drawbacks. A 2022 Deloitte study found that nearly 40% of revenue processed through toll-by-plate systems remains uncollected by toll authorities. This translates to roughly $2.2 billion in uncollected revenue across the top 40 toll authorities. In addition, pay-by-plate systems, which rely on paper invoices, are nearly twice as expensive as electronic payment systems due to higher processing costs and lower collection rates.
While the industry has made efforts to address this with the shift to AET, tolling agencies still face significant challenges, including the risk of revenue leakage. Advanced detection technologies, such as video tolling and AI-driven image review, have helped mitigate revenue leakage. However, these technologies are only effective if the payment is ultimately collected. Industry data shows that typically 75–80% of drivers use transponders, 5–12% use pay-by-plate systems, and nearly 10% of tolls still require collection through other, more expensive means that don’t guarantee payment.
This uncollected group includes in-state drivers who haven’t adopted transponders or pay-by-plate accounts, visitors to cities who don’t need these systems, and unbanked or underbanked individuals. For example, 4.5% of households—about 10.5 million Americans—are considered unbanked, and toll agencies must find ways to serve them. These individuals face financial strain due to costly invoice processes, which can erode the savings generated by AET and create inequities in highway access.
How can a modern payments platform such as PayNearMe help with some of these challenges?
Traditional tactics of trying to collect unpaid tolls at any cost, from sending invoices to agent-led collections, are no longer sustainable or effective. Instead, toll agencies need to shift their focus to influencing and changing driver payment behaviors. To improve collection rates, agencies need to focus on influencing and changing driver payment behaviors.
In an ideal world, all drivers would use transponders or set up pay-by-plate accounts with auto-replenish enabled, allowing payments to flow seamlessly. While this perfect scenario doesn’t yet exist, payment strategies can help move the needle. The reasons drivers don’t pay invoices usually come down to their willingness or ability to pay. Some drivers actively avoid paying, while others may be willing to pay, but face barriers such as limited payment options—which applies to the unbanked population I mentioned before. To maximize revenue, agencies must focus on these groups by making it easier and more convenient for them to pay. With more accessible and frictionless payments, agencies can optimize collection efforts instead of relying on costly, last-minute interventions.
What specific strategies for easier and more convenient payments can toll agencies use to improve toll collection success?
It’s critical to adapt to consumer behaviors and meet them where they are. Providing a modern payment infrastructure increases the likelihood that drivers will pay invoices, which in turn helps agencies reduce the overall cost of collection.
There are a few specific ways to make it easy for drivers to pay how, when, and where they prefer:
Personalized QR code on invoices: Make every invoice payment-ready with personalized QR codes. With a quick scan, drivers can securely access their account and pay—no passwords or additional steps required.
Cash payments at retail stores: Empower drivers to pay with cash at popular retail stores, such as Walmart, CVS, and 7-Eleven. These familiar locations offer an accessible solution for unbanked drivers, ensuring no one is left behind.
Digital wallets as a cash alternative: Beyond cards and ACH, enable drivers to pay with digital wallets, such as PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, Cash App Pay, and Google Pay. Wallet options are important for those who don’t want to directly provide their card or bank information, or prefer to pay bills using a stored balance in their wallet app.
Providing as much convenience and flexibility as possible is a powerful way to shift payment behaviors toward more desirable and equitable outcomes.
What successes have you seen from your clients in the tolling space?
We’re seeing some incredible metrics emerge from some of our early tolling clients in addition to qualitative improvements such as lowered customer support volume, an acceleration in the speed of payment processing, and an increase in payment recoveries.
Specifically, The Toll Roads of Orange County (TCA) is a PayNearMe client who was faced with the challenge of collecting payments from non-transponder or non-account-holding drivers. PayNearMe’s unique solution included QR codes for quick and easy digital payments along with digitizing cash through our cash-at-retail payment network, which enabled TCA to bring the convenience of all-electronic tolling to cash-paying motorists.
With the introduction of QR codes that allowed customers to bypass account logins and skip straight to payments, TCA is experiencing a 640% increase in payments through PayNearMe. They also saw a 35% increase in payments from drivers who didn’t initiate toll payment within five days of driving The Toll Roads.
TCA’s strategy to digitize cash payments is also exceeding expectations, with drivers from all 50 states and most of the Canadian provinces having visited participating PayNearMe locations to pay their tolls. In fact, toll payments to TCA have been made at more than 3,500 PayNearMe locations across the nation, with most of the payments made by first-time drivers of The Toll Roads.
These results prove that offering convenient choices of familiar payment options, a quick and seamless way to pay, and payment methods that fit the lifestyles of all customers—including the unbanked—is a winning combination for boosting toll collections and revenue.
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