Will 2020 Be the Year of Connected Cars?
/We’ve heard for a while about how connected cars are the future of both driving and payments. Imagine:
Pulling up to a gas station and paying for your gas with a touch of a button from the dashboard, or
Selecting your groceries on the way to the store, pre-paying for them, and picking them up already bagged and ready to go for you.
Well, things haven’t quite turned out that way just yet. But innovators are still trying to turn the automobile into a literal mobile wallet, such as Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative, which aims to turn cars into rolling wallets that are able to autonomously make and receive payments in a virtual currency. Drivers would earn small sums for sharing data on everything from traffic congestion to weather, and they’d be debited for infrastructure use and contribution to pollution, according to Bloomberg.
Would consumers be comfortable giving away even more personal data in this current age of privacy concerns? If they were compensated well enough, probably. Whether the above plan would qualify is up for debate.
