Canadian mobile payments company PayByPhone Technologies Inc., which enables drivers to pay for parking spaces using their smartphone, has just been acquired by Volkswagen Financial Services for an undisclosed price.

PayByPhone, which operates in cities across the U.S., Canada and Europe, claims to have more than 12.5 million registered users worldwide, and says it processed more than $250 million in parking payment fees in 2016. When one considers that parking fares in most cities are usually just a couple of dollars, that all adds up to a significant number of individual payments, suggesting the price of the deal might be fairly high.

It’s not immediately clear what Volkswagen intends to do with the company, but PayByPhone said in a press release that the deal will enable it to “explore new ways to expand our mobile payments technology.” It added that it’s looking forward to “accelerating our consumer parking and payments agenda made possible by this deal.”

Meanwhile, Christian Dahlheim, the management board member responsible for sales and marketing at Volkswagen Financial Services AG, said that the acquisition makes Volkswagen the leading provider for the processing and mobile payment of parking. “In the future, we will be bundling this know-how in a separate business field around the theme of parking,” he said.

There are a few possibilities here. Although Volkswagen is best known as a car manufacturer, it also offers many diversified services, for example fleet management for companies that have lots of vehicles on the road. PayByPhone could potentially tie in with that. It also could be integrated with Volkswagen’s newly launched company MOIA, which will soon offer services related to mass transit and personal car ownership.

In the immediate future, PayByPhone said its users can look forward to improved customer support, more services and greater functionality as its integrated into Volkswagen Group.

Image courtesy of PayByPhone via Facebook