The Ultimate Mobile Payment

It was only a matter of time before the stars lined up to put digital-payment capability into automobiles. After all, where do U.S. consumers spend their time when not at rest? And what has been their favorite pastime, after sports, politics, or videogaming?

As senior editor Kevin Woodward explains in our cover story this month, “Hitting the Accelerator,” payments are invading that redoubt of American isolation, freedom, and engineering, the car. With the cooperation of automakers, original-equipment manufacturers, merchants, and the card networks, you can now buy everything from parking to petrol with a few taps on that dashboard screen.

It’s an exciting new frontier for payments, but at the same time it’s easy in all the hoopla to overlook a few points. First, while car-based payment capability now exists and is filtering into vehicles, it’s not yet ubiquitous. What will it mean when it is? How will that experience change the payments business? How will it change consumer habits?

Also, how long will it take? Mobile payments on smart phones became a celebrated technology when Apple Inc. launched Apple Pay for the iPhone, and yet, four years later, mobile payments are far from ubiquitous. Indeed, consumers who have started to encounter contactless chip cards may be concluding that a card tap is just easy as a phone wave. Will automobile payments enjoy some distinction, some convenience, that overcomes that inertia in favor of plastic cards?

We think they will, if only because we spend so much time in our cars that the convenience of ordering and buying from our dashboards outweighs driving to multiple destinations in a way that the convenience of mobile payments doesn’t outweigh card taps.

Another point to remember is how this technology became possible. It’s easy to get too wrapped up in technicalities, but something like tokenization is no mere technicality. The extension of payments into smart phones first, then into the clothing we wear and the refrigerators in our kitchens, and now into cars, became possible because of the ability to digitize and mask the card credentials backing the transaction.

In another story in this issue, “The SRC Express,” we write about how tokens are key to the development of a new, multinetwork system that seeks to clean up e-commerce checkouts, streamline card payment, and thwart fraud. There are a number of kinks to work out and comments to consider. But before too long, this system, called Secure Remote Commerce, will be extended not just to e-commerce but to the Internet of Things, probably including automobiles.

Keep these things in mind as you cruise down the boulevard ordering your next cheeseburger for drive-through pickup.

—John Stewart, Editor, john@digitaltransactions.net