The Washington (D.C.) Examiner is reporting the road to mobile payment adoption may not be lined with pay-by-phone parking meters. According to the paper, on average about 25 drivers a day who use a new pay-by-phone option to feed meters in the District are ticketed by mistake.

The meters, implemented District-wide in July, are run by ParkMobile USA Inc., an Atlanta, Ga. company that runs pay-by-phone parking systems in 100 cities in the U.S. and abroad.

The District Department of Transportation, however, said the number of mistakes is a tiny portion of the total number of successful daily pay-by-phone parking transactions. John Lisle, a spokesman for DDOT, told the Washington Examiner that 10,000 pay-by-phone transactions happen every day and the system has about 180,000 registered users.

According to Lisle, the mistaken tickets are caused by an occasional delay between when payments are made and meters are updated. Lisle said DDOT is working to eliminate the problems and that anyone receiving a ticket by mistake can appeal it to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

That's not enough for Arlington, Va. resident Laura Howell. After receiving three tickets using the pay-by-phone system, none of which were dismissed on appeal, Howell told the Wasthington Examiner, "The mobile payment system is flawed and should not be grounds to receive a ticket until all system issues are resolved."

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