Have you ever had one of those days where you just want pizza to come to you as easily as possible, using as few tools to procure said pizza as possible? Then you might be into a new concept from Visa and Pizza Hut, that wants to get drivers to order and pay for their pizza without ever leaving their cars — or picking up their smartphones, for that matter.
The two companies announced the connected car idea along with Accenture during the Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona.
The system is expected to feature Visa Checkout, Visa’s online payment service, cellular connectivity, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Beacon technolgy deployed at Pizza Hut restaurants. That lats bit will let staff know when a customer is arrived and ready for the order.
“By 2020 it is estimated that more than 250 million vehicles worldwide will include some form of embedded connectivity1,” says Bill Gajda, senior vice president of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships, Visa Inc. “As the number of connected cars on the road increases, so does our ability to bring secure online commerce to consumers everywhere. We initially focused on a specific use case – ordering a meal on your way home – but we envision a world where consumers can seamlessly make many of their everyday purchases from the car.”
The team’s sights aren’t just set on pizza, though pizza is delicious. The first idea is pizza or ordering food at a quick service restaurant, but the partners note that the technology can also be applied to other things like paying for gas, transit, parking and drive-through retail opportunities of all sorts.
Vis is going to demonstrate the concept this week during the event, which lasts until Friday. The companies involved with the project expect to start testing it in Northern California this spring over a period of three months.
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
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