Middle East Business

Dubai's parking operator signs a memorandum with Bahrain's listed car parks company, days after a similar arrangement in Egypt

By Staff Writer  |  25 August 2026

Parkin and Bahrain Car Parks Company have agreed a framework covering platform integration, cross border payment and mobility data. It commits neither side to an investment, a contract or a date.

Parkin Company PJSC, the operator of Dubai's paid public parking, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Bahrain Car Parks Company, which trades as Amakin and is listed on Bahrain Bourse under the ticker CPARK. The agreement was announced on 24 August 2026.

Three areas are named in the memorandum. The first is platform integration, connecting the two companies' digital systems. The second is digital payments, tested as a feasibility question rather than a commitment, so that a customer could pay across both networks from either mobile application. The third is analysis of mobility data across the two markets. Beyond those, the document provides a framework for the pair to look at joint business across the Gulf and in selected international markets.

Our priority is to make parking simpler and more convenient for our customers. Working with Parkin gives us the opportunity to explore practical solutions that combine digital innovation with our understanding of the Bahraini market to improve customer experience, including faster payment options and more accurate space availability for the communities we already serve.

Tariq Ali Aljowder, Chief Executive Officer of Bahrain Car Parks Company

What a memorandum of this kind is, and is not

No investment figure has been announced, no commercial contract has been signed, and no date has been given for services starting in Bahrain. The wording the parties use is that they will evaluate the three opportunities. That is a familiar instrument and it does real work: it lets two listed companies begin technical due diligence on each other's systems without either committing capital or triggering disclosure obligations that a binding agreement would carry.

A memorandum that says the parties will evaluate something is an agreement to look, not an agreement to do. The commercial terms that decide whether anything is built come later, in a document that has not been written yet.

The two operators

Parkin was established in December 2023 under Law No. 30 of 2023 and floated on the Dubai Financial Market in March 2024. It holds a 49 year concession from Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority covering public on and off street parking and multistorey facilities, and it also runs developer owned parking under partnership agreements. Its own account of its portfolio at the end of 2025 was approximately 229,000 paid spaces, of which about 193,000 are on and off street, about 4,000 multistorey and about 32,000 developer owned. It recorded 141 million parking transactions in 2025.

Reported separately on 24 August, the company now operates 268,300 paid spaces across Dubai, an increase of 27 per cent year on year. The two figures are consistent, because the first is a year end position and the second is current.

Parking is reaching every single person here.

Mohamed Al Ali, Chief Executive of Parkin

Amakin was established in 1981 and describes itself as the leading provider of parking and mobility solutions in Bahrain, operating more than fifteen parking and mobility locations alongside property management, valet and digital reservation services. Its stated technology position covers automatic number plate recognition, digital parking management and contactless payment.

The pattern behind it

The Bahrain memorandum follows a comparable arrangement in Egypt agreed days earlier with Modon Misr for Asset and Facility Management, Mwasalat Misr and Redcon Properties. Within the Emirates, Parkin agreed in July to provide smart parking at Aljada in Sharjah, and in December signed a five year agreement with a developer covering 3,600 paid spaces across residential communities, including its first work on Reem Island in Abu Dhabi.

Read together, those steps describe an operator moving from a single city concession towards technology and management contracts elsewhere, which is a different business with a different risk profile. A concession carries volume risk on the operator's own network. A management or technology agreement carries performance obligations against somebody else's asset, and the drafting of those obligations is where the value in this kind of expansion is either captured or lost.