Owners of the 2024 Hyundai Kona can now pay for parking with the launch of Hyundai Pay. In partnership with Parkopedia, a platform for in-car parking reservations, Hyundai Pay will allow U.S. motorists to find, reserve, and pay at 6,000 locations, all from inside their car.
Hyundai owners can use the Hyundai Pay system within Hyundai’s Bluelink connected car services app. They can also see, book, and retrieve previous parking sessions for future trips.
According to Parkopedia’s 2023 Global Driver Survey, 94% of respondents experienced challenges with finding parking spots. More than half of U.S. drivers (58%) expressed a desire for being able to search for parking within their vehicle, and 68% wanted to pay for parking within their in-car media system.
“Hyundai Pay is the latest example of our continuous advancements in smart mobility and software-defined vehicles,” Olabisi Boyle, Vice President of product planning and mobility strategy at Hyundai Motor North America, said in a prepared statement. “With Hyundai Pay’s scalable e-commerce platform, we can elevate customer convenience and extend their digital reach by making everyday needs—like finding and paying for parking—easier, swifter, and safer via our connected-car, integrated-cockpit, and secure-transaction technology.”
“The Hyundai announcement mirrors those we have seen from other manufacturers such as Mercedes and BMW which position the car itself, and the “CarPay” system as a payment mechanism for car focused use cases such as tolls, parking, and refueling,” said Christopher Miller, Lead Analyst of Emerging Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research.
“Most of these have followed this same pattern of vertical-focused (parking, fuel, etc.) partnerships with specific retail brands or groups, and with some wallet form delivered through the vehicle’s control system. In this sense, it represents the ongoing mainstreaming of the capabilities (essentially, moving down-market over time, while being positioned as a differentiator for exclusive vehicles at launch),” he said.
Payments Through Connected Cars on the Rise
Digital payment solutions continue to evolve rapidly. Consumers can now pay for goods and services via their mobile phone, their smartwatch, and even their TV. In-car payments is just a natural progression in making digital payments more accessible, meeting consumers where they are.
In-vehicle payments, or payments made within embedded vehicle systems, are poised to hit $86 billion in 2025, a significant increase from $543 million in 2020, according to Juniper Research’s “The Race for In-Vehicle Payments.”
Partnerships that make such services more widely available to consumers will be the key to growth of this sector.
One of the challenges that in-car payments face is the issue of security. Although they are generally considered secure, in-car payments must still get some security kinks ironed out. Biometric scanning is being considered as a way to address such issues.