The new cash register security regulation initiated by the legislator is causing a lot of confusion across the industry. The parking industry is also affected by the new regulation. However, this article explains what parking management has to do with a regulation to protect against manipulation of electronic cash register systems and cash registers and what concrete consequences this has for the parking industry.
What is the Cash Register Security Ordinance?
The Cash Register Security Ordinance is a binding ordinance of the Federal Ministry of Finance that declares war on the manipulation of electronic or computer-aided cash register systems and cash registers. For this purpose, the cash registers must be upgraded with a so-called technical security device (TSE), which stores all transactions of the cash register in a tamper-proof manner and can be exported for auditing purposes. In addition, an individual signature is created for each transaction and sent back to the cash register as well as noted on the receipt. Due to a non-objection regulation of the federal states, a corresponding technical upgrade or new acquisition does not have to take place until 31.03.2021, provided that a corresponding order has been placed by 30.09.2020 at the latest.
What are the specific implications for park management?
But now to the concrete consequences for parking management. The Cash Security Ordinance described above becomes relevant for parking operators when parking ticket machines fall under the electronic or computer-based cash register systems and cash registers category and are not to be understood as service machines in the sense of § 1 paragraph 1 sentence 2 Cash Security Ordinance (KassenSichV), which are explicitly excluded from the ordinance. This point has already sparked a dispute between the federal government and the states, as the former does not see parking ticket machines as service machines. The only exception are parking ticket machines that do not have cash payment facilities. Both private and municipal parking operators are affected by the decision of the Federal Ministry of Finance. The Länder, on the other hand, are clearly in favour of exempting parking ticket machines from the regulation, also in the interest of practicability.
There is a lot of incomprehension in the municipalities and among private parking operators about the position of the Federal Ministry of Finance. Upgrading or purchasing new parking ticket machines is difficult to implement in the short term and would also incur enormous costs.
Avoiding the cost of upgrading parking ticket machines
A more sustainable solution is app payment, which is made possible by automatic and data protection-compliant number plate recognition. The costs of a conversion to sustainable, barrier-free parking management are in most cases significantly lower than a costly upgrade and conversion with TSE-compliant parking machines.
It seems as if there will be no peace in the issue of the Cash Register Security Ordinance in the near future, and also in the case of parking ticket machines, the development in the coming weeks will be followed with suspense. This is also due to the fact that exemptions already exist for similar applications such as ticket machines, cash machines or taximeters.
Image source:
Scott Graham
