i3 - November/December 2017 - 26

e-PAYMENTS
As consumers increasingly pay for goods and
services through smartphone-based mobile
wallets rather than physical credit cards or cash,
automakers and their technology partners
are working to turn infotainment screens into
the hot new payment portal. -By Robert E. Calem

he effort gained momentum at
CES last year, when Honda and
Visa demonstrated paying for parking and
fuel through a dashboard interface. And it
accelerated in the months since, when
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) launched a feature around this concept. Now, experts say
e-payments in cars can go even further.
They envision it tying into other advances
in car tech, including artificial intelligence
and autonomy, as well as related new business models. But first, work is underway to
establish automotive industry platforms
for e-payment systems.

Volvo has
acquired
Luxe, a San
Francisco-based
firm that sends
a personal valet
to a customer's
location, on
request, to park,
refuel or clean his
or her vehicle.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

"From an innovation perspective, we're seeing a future that looks very
different from today," says Avin Arumugam, senior vice president for
Internet of Things at Visa in San Francisco. Payments will be at the core
of a new commerce experience enabled by connected devices, centered on
"the new services that these devices will be able to offer the consumer."
"Right now most of the cars that are connected are using [their connectivity] purely for telematics," Arumugam says. On top of that, "commerce opportunities" can be added on. For example, a coffee shop or convenience store
10 miles away along a driver's route could send a coupon to the dashboard.
So, Visa is aiming to "determine the fundamental payment construct of how
that could work," with the goal of making e-payments in cars as simple as
paying with a credit card at a store's point-of-sale terminal, he explains.
"There are a lot of opportunities to make the experience more streamlined
and more integrated into the cockpit," Arumugam says, suggesting that biometric technology like an iris scanner in the rearview mirror or a fingerprint
sensor in the steering wheel could be used to ensure that the driver is an
authorized cardholder - and not, for instance, the cardholder's child.
I T I S I N N O VAT I O N

Courtesy Volvo

ABUNDANT OPPORTUNITIES

According to recent research from ACI
Worldwide, an e-payments processing
company based in Naples, FL, 17 percent
of U.S. consumers now regularly use smartphone-based mobile wallets for transactions, up from six percent in 2014.
Overseas, usage is even higher. In Sweden,
the figure is 23 percent, in Italy it's 24 percent and in Spain it's 25 percent. However,
the UK lags at 14 percent, ACI reports.
Meanwhile, consulting firm Frost &
Sullivan predicts in its 2017 Global
Automotive Industry Outlook that automotive industry revenues from new business models and technologies will reach
$1.3 trillion in 2030. And this will encompass automakers' diversification into financial technologies (such as e-payments),
Frost & Sullivan says.

i3 - November/December 2017

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