California-based financial technology solution provider Car IQ are to deliver highly-secure vehicle-based payment capabilities to unlock a connected car payments market that is projected to reach over €530 billion by 2030.
Car IQ will leverage BlackBerry IVY’s in-vehicle edge computing and direct access to vehicle sensors.
This vehicle-based payment solution will create new opportunities for automakers to offer a vast array of payment services and develop previously untapped revenue streams.
The solution will create a “digital fingerprint” for the vehicle, allowing it to securely connect to a bank’s payment network, validate, and autonomously pay for a wide range of frequently used services, including fuel, tolls, parking, insurance, maintenance, and other “wallet” capabilities.
Historically, vehicle-based payment processes have been complex and leverage legacy banking primitives such as physical credit cards or multiple smartphone apps to communicate with each individual merchant and service provider.
“We are delighted to demonstrate the value of BlackBerry IVY’s end-to-end offering for this market through our partnership with Car IQ,” said Peter Virk, Vice President of IVY Product and Ecosystem, BlackBerry.
“Access to sensor data and edge computing will allow for an incredibly secure in-vehicle payments solution.”
Earlier today, Car IQ announced it has raised $15 million in Series B funding.
Car IQ is the first payment solution developed for fleet vehicles. They enable vehicles to autonomously initiate and complete payments for services such as fuel, tolls, parking and more.
Car IQ’s platform makes it easy for fleet managers to onboard vehicles and replace personal credit and debit cards with direct connections from vehicle to financial institution. This creates a secure payment experience, simplifies accounting and eliminates disputes over questionable transactions.
Car IQ’s dynamic identity verification is the foundation of their proprietary technology KYMSM (Know Your Machine) process. The KYMSM process makes it possible for vehicles to directly request, then validate / revalidate and pay for services rendered.
BlackBerry IVY
Announced in December 2020 as part of a multi-year, global agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS), BlackBerry IVY is a scalable, cloud-connected software platform that will allow automakers to provide a consistent and secure way to read vehicle sensor data, normalize it, and create actionable insights from that data both locally in the vehicle and in the cloud. Automakers can use this information to create responsive in-vehicle services that enhance driver and passenger experiences.
BlackBerry IVY addresses a critical data access, collection, and management problem in the automotive industry. Modern cars and trucks are built with thousands of parts from many different suppliers, with each vehicle model comprising a unique set of proprietary hardware and software components.
These components, which include an increasing variety of vehicle sensors, produce data in unique and specialized formats. The highly specific skills required to interact with this data, as well as the challenges of accessing it from within contained vehicle subsystems, limit developers’ abilities to innovate quickly and bring new solutions to market.
BlackBerry IVY will solve for these challenges by applying machine learning to that data to generate predictive insights and inferences, making it possible for automakers to offer in-vehicle experiences that are highly personalized and able to take action based on those insights.
“We are excited to accelerate the time-to-market of our latest in-vehicle payment solution and to capture share of the connected car payments market by leveraging the BlackBerry IVY platform,” said Sterling Pratz, CEO and founder of Car IQ.
“With BlackBerry IVY we can now fully embed our solution on a common platform in the vehicle, allowing us to not only provide the highest level of security, but also greatly reduce complexity for banks and merchants.”
BlackBerry IVY will support multiple vehicle operating systems and multi-cloud deployments in order to ensure compatibility across vehicle models and brands. It will build upon BlackBerry QNX’s capabilities for surfacing and normalizing data from automobiles and AWS’s broad portfolio of services, including capabilities for IoT and machine learning.
BlackBerry IVY will run inside a vehicle’s embedded systems, but will be managed and configured remotely from the cloud. As a result, automakers will gain greater visibility into vehicle data, control over who can access it, and edge computing capabilities to optimize how quickly and efficiently the data is processed.
With BlackBerry IVY’s integrated capabilities, automakers will be able to deliver new features, functionality, and performance to customers over the lifetime of their cloud-connected vehicles, as well as unlock new revenue streams and business models built on vehicle data.
“Fleet managers, shared vehicle operators and individual vehicle owners will benefit from greater convenience and secure management of transactions as the next wave of connected vehicle technology integrates more closely with merchant platforms for cashless and cardless payments,” said Lee Colman, Chief Production Officer of global automotive technology analyst firm SBD Automotive.
“Undisputable identification of the vehicle and/or driver leveraging seamless vehicle sensor technology at the point of sale underpinned by security creates further efficiencies for the entire fleet value chain.”
