Darwin City Council says no-one has been issued parking fines today despite a computer glitch that hit their credit card payment system, causing it to reject cards when motorists tried to pay for permits.
Some people who arrived at Darwin's car parks throughout the morning had credit cards rejected, the latest glitch to hit the system in recent weeks.
A council worker who answered the phone when people called the fault reporting line confirmed parking would be free today for people who tried unsuccessfully to use the credit card payment system.
"Council rangers have been alerted to the issue," she said.
But a statement from the council's manager of economic development, Liam Carroll, later said people should pay at an alternative parking machine or by coins.
"Due to circumstances beyond council's control with its telecommunications provider, some credit card parking machines are not working at the moment," the statement issued this morning said.
"We apologise for the inconvenience," he said.
The council's general manager of City Life, Anna Malgorzewicz, later said that despite the outages all users of the car parks were displaying the correct tickets and nobody had been fined.
A worker who was trying to rectify the problem this morning said the issue was intermittent and efforts were being made to repair it.
He said the fault likely rested with Telstra.
Telstra has been contacted for comment.
