Car IQ & Visa team to launch digital payments for vehicles

By Gloria Mathias

Car IQ Inc., a vehicle manufacturing company, teamed up with Visa, a digital payments platform.

This enables the vehicles to transact directly with Visa’s global ecosystem of merchants and banks. Moreover, vehicle owners can purchase fuel, tolls, parking, insurance, service, and repairs using the Car IQ Pay vehicle wallet.

This technology allows vehicles to maintain their own payment accounts to connect and transact directly with merchants without using a physical card. Bringing this technology to the Visa network greatly expands its reach and will allow the two companies to serve a large share of the connected vehicle payment market.

Car IQ Pay incorporates real-time connected vehicle data before, during, and after every payment. The collaboration leverages Car IQ’s technology “Know Your Machine”, which authenticates a machine’s identity to enable all types of vehicles to transact directly with merchants.

Veronica Fernandez, North America Head of Visa Business Solutions said, “Through this collaboration with Car IQ, we’re excited to drive the growth of vehicle-based payments that allow users to take control of their fleet business through enhanced and timely data capabilities that allow for real-time business decisions.”

“Our collaboration with Visa allows us to accelerate the adoption of vehicle payments and make them a seamless part of the fleet experience today and the consumer experience in the future,” said Sterling Pratz, CEO of Car IQ. “Our vehicle wallet allows banks and merchants to trust payments from vehicles, as well as any other IoT device, over the Visa network.”

Car IQ also works with auto OEMs to embed these payments within consumer vehicles. Recently debuted at CES, the Car IQ Pay in-dash vehicle wallet connects vehicles to merchants on the Visa network, enabling payments directly from the car’s infotainment system.

“While our first wallet initiative is focused on vehicles, our platform is designed to easily support any IoT device payment, and we are already seeing interest for connected ‘smart’ city applications and believe the connected home will be next,” added Pratz. “In the future, I believe everyone will have the choice of adding their cars, home appliances, and more directly to their bank account to transact.”