Mobile technology continues to shift gears as it works its way into the smart car, with Jaguar and Shell announcing a pioneering integration of mobile payment platforms into the former’s newest car models.
The new functionality lets drivers of Jaguar’s F-PACE, XE, and XF cars pay for gas and gas station shop purchases from the comfort of their vehicles. The payments are facilitated via PayPal or Apple Pay accounts, with plans to support Android Pay later this year. Transactions are conducted through the car’s touchscreen, and a digital receipt is automatically sent to the driver’s email.
While Apple Pay currently employs fingerprint-based biometric authentication to secure transactions on mobile phones and on the web, it appears that its iteration in these Jaguar cars will be a little more lax. But with Jaguar Land Rover exploring biometric security systems for vehicles – a recent patent filing describes a door unlocking system based on facial recognition – it appears likely that biometric security is in the pipeline for car-based payments.
And Jaguar probably won’t be the last car maker to embrace in-car payments, with Accenture and Visa also having teamed up to develop such a system as automakers become increasingly fixated on the connected car concept. For their part, though, Shell and Jaguar are planning to extend this functionality around the world after it has made its UK debut.
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