In the world of payments, much sweat and treasure has beenspent on trying to make payments as ‘friction-less’ as possible. Not a weekgoes by without hearing about some new effort from Silicon Valley that istrying to disrupt the dreaded checkout line by allowing customers to pay bymethods ranging from tappingtheir phone, to simplyidentifying themselves to a sales associate who has already pulled up theirpersonal information on a tablet to even emitting highfrequency sounds. Few of these efforts have been successful, because apartfrom being different, they never made the case why consumers would actuallystand to benefit by learning these new behaviors at the point of sale.
Now, we hear that Pizza Hut, Visa, and Accenture have teamedup to develop what looks to be a plausibly appealing use case for contactlesspayments that actually does eliminate the ‘friction’ involved in one type of commerce scenario:drive-through meal ordering. According to Bill Gajda, senior vice president ofInnovation and Strategic Partnerships, Visa Inc
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“By 2020 it is estimated that more than 250 millionvehicles worldwide will include some form of embedded connectivity. As thenumber of connected cars on the road increases, so does our ability to bringsecure online commerce to consumers everywhere. We initially focused on aspecific use case – ordering a meal on your way home – but we envision a worldwhere consumers can seamlessly make many of their everyday purchases from thecar.”
This proof of concept is expected to use a number of cuttingedge technologies like Bluetooth Low-Energy to create a seamless omnichannelexperience, a concept we explored in depth in a recent Mercator report “MobilePayments Strategy in the Omnichannel Age.”
“The connected car is expected to feature VisaCheckout, Visa’s online payment service, cellular connectivity, Bluetooth LowEnergy (BLE), as well as Beacon technology deployed at Pizza Hut restaurants toalert staff when the customer has arrived and is ready to pick up the order.The integration of these technologies is being managed by Accenture.”
Overview by Nikhil Jospeh, Analyst, Emerging Technologies for Mercator Advisory GroupRead full story at Businesswire