Publix shoppers can now renew vehicle registrations in Florida - Michael Towner

Publix shoppers can now renew vehicle registrations in less than two minutes at one of three stores in Hillsborough County offering a self-service kiosk through the tax collector’s office.
​Hillsborough County Tax Collector Doug Belden announced the “Florida MV Express” program’s expansion Tuesday morning inside the grocery chain. The bright blue and yellow automated kiosks are up and running in three Publix locations.
The kiosks were provided to Hillsborough County free of charge from developers Intellectual Technology Inc., in exchange for the proceeds from a 2.25 percent fee on credit or debit card payments, Belden said. Kiosks inside the tax collector’s branch locations accept cash payments at no additional charge.
Vehicle registration kiosks have long been mainstays in grocery stores in California, Colorado, Hawaii and at least a dozen other states. But bringing the customer service innovation to Florida first required about two years of negotiations with the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, rewrites to state legislation and another year of negotiations with Publix executives, Belden said.
“This is huge for us,” Belden said Tuesday. "Especially as our county continues to grow, we’ve been looking for ways to take the pressure off of our customer service representatives in different ways with emerging and cutting-edge technology. You can’t just keep building more branches.”
Belden’s office became the first agency in Florida to adopt the automated kiosks with a soft launch in early February at four of its busiest tax collector locations: in Brandon, Drew Park, North Tampa and Ruskin.
Since then, those four kiosks have processed more than 20,000 vehicle registrations, Belden said. The three Publix kiosks, only operational for a few days, have already renewed 160 vehicle registrations.
Belden said he hopes his office can find ways to expand the kiosks’ uses and locations. For now, the kiosks can only renew vehicle registrations for personal vehicles and trailers that don’t require an IRS Heavy Vehicle Use Tax or a new license plate to be issued. They can’t renew registrations for autonomous vehicles, government vehicles, boats, mobile homes, National Guard or personalized license plates and cannot switch to specialty license plates.
It’s a promising start, said Brian West, the supermarket’s Media and Community Relations Manager.
“Hillsborough was the first county in Florida to do this, but for Publix, these are the first stores in our entire footprint to have these kiosks — and we operate in seven states,” West said.

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