What’s Coming Up in Car-Based Mobile Payments?

It’s not hard to call car-based mobile payments the most mobile of payments, because the interface for the same is built right into a car. Sure, mobile devices are mobile too, but that’s more a walking issue. At any rate, there are new reports suggesting that the pay-from-your-car concept may be about to pick up.

The stakes here are substantial; a report from PYMNTS’ Commerce Connected Playbook notes that the average US driver spends about 51 minutes on daily commutes to and from the office. Throw in a combined 64 million connected vehicles expected to be in play by the end of 2019, and this opens up some substantial marketing opportunities, whether it’s for gas for the car or fuel for the human.

Though there are serious opportunities at work here, there are also certain expectations that will need to be met. For instance, interfaces need to be as intuitive as possible. Some have even suggested that the systems might be able to authorize some of their own purchases in advance, like a refueling stop.

Security, as ever, will also be a high priority; a moving vehicle may not be so readily hacked—it may well end up well out of wireless range of a stationary hacker before the hack can be accomplished—but a car parked at a gas station may be a much greater target. Or worse, a car parked at an office for a full workday. Already some advancements have emerged on this front; First Data has been pushing tokenization as part of a way to ensure safety.

These issues, however, aren’t likely to stop the advance of mobile payments in cars for very long, if at all. The value of convenience has long been a driving factor in American commerce—if something gives us back a few minutes in every day, we’re likely to go with the item in question—and car-based mobile payments could do that job well. Only having to unroll your window once at a drive-thru to get your food could be great in bad weather, and any time spent outside in a gas station can be horrible.

Car-based mobile payments could be a big deal, but there’s a lot that needs to be accomplished before this goes into any kind of wide use.