In partnership with Pizza Hut and Accenture, Visa has created a proof-of-concept vehicle ordering system that allows for seamless ordering, payment and pickup of pizzas.
The system combines Visa's Checkout technology, which facilitates payments, with the car's connected navigation system to create the ordering system. The technology also connects to Bluetooth and beacons to inform the restaurant's staff when a particular customer has arrived for pick up.
The technology is being demo'd this week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, with plans to trial the integrated payment and ordering service for three months in Northern California this spring.
In pushing the technology, Visa's senior vice president of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships Bill Gajda quoted Gartner research from January 2015:
By 2020 it is estimated that more than 250 million vehicles worldwide will include some form of embedded connectivity. As the number of connected cars on the road increases, so does our ability to bring secure online commerce to consumers everywhere. We initially focused on a specific use case - ordering a meal on your way home - but we envision a world where consumers can seamlessly make many of their everyday purchases from the car.
This is a huge shift that might expand travel from simply being a thing you do away from home to something that includes moving from A to B in your hometown. This mirrors the shift of restaurants into the travel space alongside Priceline's purchase of OpenTable. Clearly it's only a matter of time until you can make restaurant reservations anywhere you want from the car.
Ideal for car rentals
The most obvious initial travel use case is in car rentals, where tour operators and local destination attractions can offer drive-by deals for nearby travelers. And rather than simply hoping that the traveler stops, the purchase can be completed right in the car thus guaranteeing the transaction. This form of marketing is also inherently trackable, as all the pieces exist for proper ROI measurement.
Similar to the way that taxi cabs have local destination information, car rental dash systems could also become arbiters of local promotion and marketing. Hertz is already experimenting heavily with new technologies in bid to become the most tech-forward car rental agency.
While on the surface these in-car transactions seem simple, heavy integration is required to bring together the various systems — especially when it comes to inventory management in hospitality applications or a live production system such as a pizza restaurant. Accenture is responsible for managing integration in this demo, and sees a vast potential for the types of transactions that could soon be completed via vehicles, says Anand Swaminathan, Global Growth and Strategy lead for Accenture Digital:
Accenture is responsible for managing integration in this demo, and sees a vast potential for the types of transactions that could soon be completed via vehicles, says Anand Swaminathan, Global Growth and Strategy lead for Accenture Digital:
We are pleased to team with Visa to explore the future of Internet of Things-based commerce by building the connected car commerce prototype. Visa has great vision in this space and continues to innovate and explore new ways to make purchases more convenient for consumers, setting the bar even higher in terms of friction-less payment transactions.
Driverless cars will also provide a massive marketing opportunity, as drivers will now have time for other forms of engagement — and could even be brought directly to the tour or attraction after purchasing admission within the vehicle. This will most definitely not be the last experiment with such in-vehicle payment systems, as the dawn of the connected car has just broken.