Honda In-Vehicle Payments Now Support Visa, Mastercard, PayPal

Paying on the go — literally, as in on the road and in the car — is gaining traction.

As noted yesterday in the PYMNTS Digital Drive Report, 99 million drivers — commuters, to be exact — are connecting to their dashboards and driving $230 billion in commerce, buying everything from groceries to coffee.

To that end, Honda has debuted its Honda Dream Drive prototype, billed as the “next generation infotainment, commerce, services and rewards” experience for drivers and passengers.

In reference to commerce, Honda said in a release that its relationship with Visa, which focuses on in-vehicle payments, and which traces its genesis to 2016, continues. And now, said Honda, it is expanding its in-vehicle collaboration to include Mastercard and PayPal.

In a release Tuesday (Jan. 8), Olabisi Boyle, vice president of IoT at Visa, said that “by continuing our partnership with Honda, a leader in automotive innovation, we are furthering the development of in-car commerce solutions that focus on security, safety, and convenience for the driver. Combining Visa’s payment expertise and Honda’s expansive platform, we are one step closer to transforming the car in to a new epicenter for commerce.”

Honda said Tuesday that the integration of mobile services — including commerce and payments — through the prototype Honda Dream Drive was first shown as a concept at CES 2017 and now is being demoed this year at CES through Jan. 11. The in-vehicle payment system allows drivers to pay for goods and services such as fuel, parking and movie tickets, order ahead for pickup and also share drivers’ location with family.

Honda Dream Drive is both voice-activated and touch-enabled, and for commerce options the automotive giant said it has partnered with a series of firms ranging from Grubhub to The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to Chevron to Atom Tickets, among others.

“From the comfort of their homes to the confines of their cars, people want to make purchases when they want and where they want,” Sherri Haymond, executive vice president, Digital Partnerships, North America, Mastercard, said in the release detailing the Honda prototype. “Our familiarity of shopping with mobile and voice-activated devices have created the expectation for almost every device to be a way to shop and pay.”

Honda also said Tuesday that it seeks to “create new value for vehicle ownership and use” and as part of that effort Honda Developer Studio is user-testing a points-based reward program that benefits those who use Honda products and services in-vehicle, ranging from payments to watching media.