In-Car Payments Landscape Continues Changing

The notion of in-car payments has been on the rise for some time now, and more than a few payment providers are seeing the value in letting users pay for things from a car itself without even getting out.

This development is prompting more than a little change, not just from the usual suspects of mobile payments but from car makers and other organizations as well. So how is the market itself affected by this change in payment medium?

The biggest point to consider here is the opportunity. Imagine a couple of extra command lines where the car door won’t unlock and let you out unless you pay for parking first. Theoretically, that might be possible, and it might save municipalities some cash on parking enforcement as the car would basically do it for them.

Even beyond that, there’s a lot of room for opportunity. Imagine a car that can pay for gasoline right as it pulls into the pump. The notion of drive-offs might be gone for good that way, especially if, again, the payment system can hook to the car ignition or door locks.

Leaving aside the punitive, the growing demand for takeout food—as exemplified by Square’s recent purchase of OrderAhead—could see a huge benefit from a car-based mobile wallet, as the car pulls right up into position to take the food.

That’s got services like Amazon and Google looking more closely at the concept of getting a payment system into cars, and likely opens up the possibility of sponsorship deals with carmakers, who may well charge a percentage of payments processed to have the payment system included as part of the car.

Some are even already looking at this concept with skepticism; distracted driving may well play a role in all this. With the idea of augmented reality navigation lost to the boogeyman of distracted driving, will our ability to pay from a car go likewise?

There’s a lot going on in the field of in-car mobile payments, and the final form it all takes won’t be known for some time. No matter how it looks, though, things are definitely about to change, and change in a very big way.