Rental plates are the parking debt you're least equipped to collect.
On an ordinary plate, the registered owner is the driver, and your notice reaches the person who owes it. On a rental plate, the registered owner is a company. The notice reaches an operator who was not there, who has to work out which of their hirers had the vehicle at that time, and who has every reason to dispute, delay, or simply leave it in a pile.
Everything about that works against a third party's normal collection timeline. The clock runs while the operator looks up a booking. The paper trail stops at a company that did not commit the breach. And when the operator does identify the hirer, the hire is long over and the driver is somewhere else, possibly overseas.
FinePass removes the operator from the middle. The notice goes to the driver who was behind the wheel, with the evidence and a way to pay, while the breach is still recent.
How it actually works
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Step 1: The notice comes in
You forward the notice the same way you already send notices, to notices@finepass.co.nz, whenever the registered owner is a participating rental fleet. Nothing about the notice itself changes: same format, same evidence, same reference.
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Step 2: FinePass matches it to the hire
At the moment the notice arrives, FinePass asks the operator's booking system one question: who had this vehicle at this date and time. It looks up one booking per notice. FinePass does not hold a synced copy of the operator's customer database, and it never sees the hirers who were not involved.
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Step 3: The driver is notified
The hirer receives the notice, the evidence, and a payment link by email. At this stage you do not see the driver's name or contact details; FinePass carries the notice on your behalf.
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Step 4: If it goes unpaid, a defined cadence
Notified the day the notice arrives. A reminder a week later. A final notice a week after that. Escalation a week after the final notice goes unanswered. Each email says which step it is, and escalation happens only after those three follow-ups have been missed, not before, and not at anyone's discretion.
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Step 5: Escalation is a real handoff
At that point, and only at that point, you receive the driver's name and contact details to pursue directly through your normal process. If FinePass does not get the fine paid, you are not left with nothing: you are left with the person who owes it.
Commercial terms
- Who pays the fee
- The driver. A flat handling fee is added to the driver's notice on top of your charge. It is not billed to you and not billed to the operator. You receive your charge in full when the driver pays.
- When FinePass earns anything
- Only when the driver pays. A notice that is written off, disputed, or never matched to a booking earns FinePass nothing, and costs you nothing.
- Remittance
- Collected fines are paid out on a weekly Stripe run, with a portal showing what was matched, notified, and paid at every stage.
- If nothing is collected
- Nothing changes hands. No minimum commitment, no integration fee, and no invoice for unmatched or unpaid notices. There is no scenario in which you pay FinePass.
What changes for you, and what doesn't
What changes
- When the registered owner is a participating rental fleet, you forward the notice to FinePass instead of posting it to the operator.
- That is the whole change.
What doesn't change
- Your own systems and your own notice format.
- Your enforcement process for every other vehicle.
- No new software to install, and no integration work to start.
Privacy and legal footing
The hirer has already agreed, in their rental agreement with the operator, that their contact details may be disclosed to a notice relay service (FinePass) and, if a notice stays unpaid after fair warning, onward to the organisation that issued it. That consent is given before the hire starts, not after the breach.
Driver details are not shared with you up front. They are disclosed only after the escalation trigger described above, once the driver has missed the defined follow-ups.
The disclosure obligation sits with the operator and with FinePass, not with you. You receive a notice recipient's details only at escalation, on the basis of consent the hirer has already given.
Questions a sceptical reader would ask
What if the driver disputes the fine?
It routes back to your normal enforcement and dispute process. FinePass does not adjudicate disputes; it pauses the notice, tells you, and hands the dispute to you as it would have reached you anyway.
What if the notice doesn't match any booking?
It falls back to your existing process, exactly as if FinePass were not involved. The registered owner is still the rental company, and you pursue it the way you do today. An unmatched notice carries no fee.
What if a rental operator stops using FinePass?
Notices already in progress complete as normal, through to payment or escalation. The plate is removed from the registry going forward, and new notices for it go back to your existing process.
Do we need to integrate anything?
No. Forwarding a notice differently, when the registered owner is a participating fleet, is the only operational change required to start. An API is there if you ever want to submit notices from your own system, but it is not needed on day one.
Talk to us about a pilot
We are onboarding one parking company at a time. Tell us who you are and roughly what you issue, and we will come back to you with what a pilot would look like.