Visa to Turn Car into a Mobile Payment Platform

Visa showed off a concept app this week that allows drivers to pay for fuel without leaving their car.

February 23, 2016

NEW YORK – CNBC reports that Visa and Honda have teamed up to bring mobile payments to cars.

Visa showed off a concept app at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week that allows drivers to pay for fuel and parking without leaving their vehicle. Last year at the Mobile World Congress event in Shanghai, Visa revealed its plans to bring mobile payments into consumer vehicles.

Visa and Honda created the app, which can be accessed through the car's dashboard. The app lets the driver know when the vehicle is low on gas and navigates them to the nearest location to fill up. When the vehicle is parked next to the pump, the app can calculate the cost of the fill up and the driver can pay for the gas, as well as in-store items, via their dashboard.

CNBC writes that Visa and many other companies are “betting big on the potential of the connected car,” noting that in four years there will be an estimated quarter of a billion connected vehicles on the road.

"The notion of transforming a car into a platform for payments is not as far off as some may think, and we have made a great deal of progress since first introducing the idea one year ago," said Jim McCarthy, executive vice president of innovation and strategic partnerships at Visa, in a press release. "Working with Honda to test these prototypes gets us another step closer toward commercial reality, which we think provides exciting opportunities to everyone who plays a role in the payments and automotive ecosystems."

Visa has been making strides with connected car technology for a few years. NACS Daily reported in 2015 that Visa, Pizza Hut and Accenture announced a proof-of-concept connected car to test mobile and online purchases on the go.

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