Sometimes knowing the little things can help out in a BIG way – especially now that the temperatures are starting to soar.
I recently found out that parking can be paid for through your mobile phone. Most people living in the city already know about this, but for us off islanders (who never really have to worry about parking) are missing out on this one helpful tip.
You can easily pay for your Mawaqif parking from the comfort of your air conditioned car just by sending one simple text. What? That’s right. Believe me, I have spent many trips driving around a parking lot, trying to find a space closest to the parking meter. I have also made extra trips dashing out to the parking meter to extend the parking. Can you believe I actually cut short a spa treatment because my time was running out on parking? Now I don’t have to do that and neither do you. No more standing in the scorching sun as you dig through wallet for dirhams to pay for parking.
How?
If you have not set up a Mawaqif Account, all it takes is a simple text to 3009. The cost of the parking is deducted from your mobile phone credit.
Plate Category – Plate Number –Tariff – Durations in hours.
So for STANDARD parking for 1 hour it should look like this:
Red6 54321 S 1
For Standard parking for 2 hours it would look like this:
Red6 54321 S 2
Most parking is STANDARD but you can look on the parking signage to confirm.
The text needs to be in that format, otherwise you will get an error message. You will also find these instructions on the parking meter. Once you send in the message, you will get a confirmation text.
It is that simple!
Of course I always make things harder than they need to be. Initially I had been typing the text to 3009 in the wrong format, so I thought the error was because I needed to register with a Mawaqif account online. So I set an account up.
This will allow you to top up with your credit card to pay for parking. It only takes a few moments to complete the new user registration. Visit www.mawaqif.ae for all the details.
**IMPORTANT – If you set up the Mawaqif account but want to pay for parking only using mobile phone credits, be sure to select “Enable Mobile Credit Payment.” When I set up my account, I hadn’t selected this. I was still getting an error message and couldn’t figure out why. It was because I had set up the account without selecting this option so it was looking for funds in the top up account which was zero.
Now that I have selected Enable Mobile Credit Payment, any parking fees will be deducted from my mobile phone credit. Shortly before my time expires, I get another text reminding me that my time will expire and I can extend the time. So simple. Won’t be cutting short any spa treatments in the future, that is for sure.
Knowing this has made my life a little easier. Beat the heat by paying for parking with your phone!
The last bit about the Enable Mobile Credit Payment just made my life easy!! I was searching the whole mawaqif site but there was no mention about this anywhere.
Thank you.
God Bless
I want to delete my phone number and this Account. I dont see that options of deleting number or delete MAWAFIQ account
I have been paying mawaqif by phone since several years. And i also know that we can pay using mobile credit. But i could never find why its not debiting my mobile balance rather than showing “error message”. Recharging the mawaqif account is little time consuming and we will come to know the “insufficient balance” only when sitting in a meeting and trying to extend the parking fee.
You solved my problem. Just tick it.. Thank you very much