Sheeva.AI Powers In-Vehicle Payments for Citroën in India

Sheeva.AI has announced that its in-vehicle payment technology is now available in Citroën vehicles in India.

The solution powered by the company’s SheevaConnect product suite is available in Citroën C3 Aircross SUV AT vehicles that are in showrooms across the country, the company said in a Tuesday (April 16) press release emailed to PYMNTS.

Sheeva.AI described the vehicle in the release as “the most budget-friendly automatic mid-sized SUV in India.”

With the company’s in-vehicle payment technology, owners of this vehicle can pay for fuel at 32,000 stations across the country using their preferred Unified Payments Interface (UPI) provider through the MyCitroën Connect mobile app, according to the release.

“We’re very excited to see our technology come to life for Citroën drivers in India,” Evgeny Klochikhin, CEO and founder of Sheeva.AI, said in the release. “We want to enable a simpler, more secure customer experience for in-vehicle services by using precise vehicle location to activate and authorize payments at the point of service.”

In use, the driver of the vehicle pulls up to a SheevaConnect-enabled gas station; is greeted by attendants who dispense the fuel and scan a QR code; and then departs, with a digital receipt processed through the MyCitroën Connect mobile app, per the release.

Other use cases for the in-vehicle payment technology are coming soon, the release said. These include parking and tolling, for example.

Sheeva.AI’s product suite is being rolled out globally, with more than 2 million fuel pumps, parking spaces, electric vehicle (EV) chargers and other services points mapped in the database for the company’s location-based platform, according to the release.

In another recent partnership, Sheeva.AI teamed up with Visa Acceptance Solutions in November 2023 to launch a tokenization platform for in-vehicle commerce.

With this collaboration, Sheeva.AI will employ Visa’s Cybersource Token Management Service to power its multiuse tokenization platform for in-vehicle payments by using exact vehicle location to permit payments at the point of service.

In an earlier development in this space, Mercedes-Benz began using Visa technology to enable native in-car payments when it started rolling out Mercedes pay+ on select new vehicle models in March 2023.

That technology lets the automaker’s customers in Germany pay for digital services and on-demand hardware upgrades via a fingerprint sensor mounted in the car.