As cars become ever-more sophisticated, consumers will be able to pay using onboard interfaces, saving the time and hassle of having to hold their credit card out of the window or pulling over and getting out their phone. This new frontier is known as ‘in-vehicle payments’.
If the car is running low on fuel, it can order the right amount of fuel at the nearest petrol station and then the driver simply has to confirm the action on the car screen. Similarly, the car can mediate payments for parking, toll roads and even fines.
Payment cards’ data protection and fraud prevention technologies are far more advanced than car anti-theft systems, so current encryption protocols along with other methods used by payment systems provide a sufficient level of protection for in-vehicle payment data.