General Motors Launches On-Board E-Commerce for 1.9 Million Cars
12-6-2017
General Motors announced Tuesday that millions of its model-year 2017 or later cars will become e-commerce enabled through a new in-car platform called Marketplace.
Drivers of Marketplace-enabled cars will be able to prepay for coffee and gas as well as make restaurant reservations and hotel reservations through an interface on-board. Merchants included in the marketplace at launch include Shell, Exxon Mobil, TGI Fridays, Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and Applebee’s, GM said.
The platform – developed in collaboration with IBM – will be uploaded automatically to about 1.9 million vehicles starting immediately, Reuters reported. Four million vehicles across the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac brands will include the platform by the end of 2018, the automaker said.
GM Vice President for Global Connected Customer Experience Santiago Chamorro told reporters at a press briefing that GM will get an undisclosed amount of revenue from merchants featured on its in-dash Marketplace, according to Reuters.
GM is not the first car manufacturer to venture into integrating e-commerce on-board its vehicles. Ford Motor Company has partnered with ETA member Amazon to bring ecommerce to its cars through the Alexa AI system, and Jaguar has partnered with Shell for in-car fuel payments. At ETA’s TRANSACT conference in 2015, Visa debuted a “connected car” capable of ordering pizza through in-car ecommerce.
Watch GM’s announce video here, and see the story originally reported in Reuters here.
About ETA
The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) is the global trade association representing more than 500 payments and technology companies. ETA members make commerce possible by processing more than $6 trillion in purchases in the US and deploying payments innovations to merchants and consumers. Learn more: www.electran.org.
