Modu's Parking Lot, the parking platform operated by Socar, has launched Korea's first voice-based parking pass purchase service powered by artificial intelligence. Users speak their destination and parking duration, and the AI finds and recommends lots that match those conditions, then connects them to payment and navigation.
Modu's Parking Lot said on the 18th that it had added an "AI microphone" feature to the app's home screen. When a user says something like "Find me a parking lot near Gangnam Station" or "That lot I paid for last time," the AI recommends options through conversation. Users complete the purchase by pressing a single "Pay" button at the final step.
Previously, buying a parking pass required as many as 12 steps, from searching for a destination to comparing lots, checking details, selecting a pass type and duration, confirming the vehicle and paying. Even frequent users needed about two minutes to reach payment, and the service was difficult to use while driving because it required constant attention to the screen.
Actual purchases, however, tend to cluster just before a trip. According to Modu's Parking Lot, about 62% of users entered a parking lot within an hour of paying for a pass. That is why the company designed the service so users can search for lots and reach the final payment step by voice alone, without typing.
The AI recognizes destination, time, price range and parking type all at once. It handles open-ended requests such as "Find me somewhere near Gangnam Station to park for three hours starting at 5 p.m.," as well as vehicle-specific conditions including repurchasing a recently used lot, short-term parking near the user's current location, and excluding mechanical parking facilities.
For destination searches, the company drew on commercial district data it built in-house. Its data team combined machine-learning-generated information on 358 commercial districts nationwide with regional parking usage records, adjusting more than 30,000 destination keywords to align with the points where actual parking demand occurs.
The company also applied safeguards for personal information and payments. License plate numbers and card details are converted into random tokens on Modu's Parking Lot servers before being passed to the AI, preventing the AI from directly accessing actual personal data. Conversation content is discarded as soon as a session ends.
The AI's role is limited to recommending lots and moving the user to the payment step. Final payment occurs only when the user presses the "Pay" button, and the Modu's Parking Lot payment system verifies the amount again.
"This service came out of an in-house AI pilot program in which employees proposed the idea themselves and carried it from planning through development," said Noh Hyun-chul, head of Modu's Parking Lot. "Following the beta launch, we will keep refining it based on actual usage metrics to improve convenience for users."
