FIS and SAP enable wireless payments at gas stations

26 November 2015 Consultancy.uk

FIS and SAP have integrated their offerings to allow customers of petrol stations to pay for their fuel wirelessly without having to reach for their wallet. The system will leverage SAP’s Vehicles Network, which runs on SAP HANA Cloud, with FIS’ Mobile Payment Enablement Gateway. The contactless payment system for petrol transactions is according to the partners the first of its kind, and is designed to operate on already existing hardware while providing further customisation for a range of players in the industry’s ecosystem.

Players across a range of sectors are scrambling to create offerings in the mobile payments space, with the massive potential creating possible threats to more traditional payment systems, such as debit and credit cards. While traditional players are seeking to court startups, a wide range of players are creating offerings across markets to improve convenience to customers, but also leverage new ways of providing value added services.

Woman at gasstation

The new partnership between FIS and German ERP giant SAP will see the companies develop a mobile payments platform for the automotive / oil & gas industry. The service aims to remove the need for a physical payment interaction at select petrol stations throughout North America, for customers connected to mobile devices. This will mean, according to the companies, that “consumers are soon expected to pull up to the gas station, activate a fuel pump and pay without ever opening their wallets.”

The services will be supported through synergising a number of software and payment system technologies owned by the respective companies. SAP will provide SAP Vehicles Network running on SAP HANA Cloud Platform, which will be integrated with the FIS Mobile Payment Enablement Gateway solution. Customers connected to the integrated network can then, from their car or mobile phone, make pre-authorised payments to pumps at stations – the pump will be set as soon as the customer steps out of their vehicle.

The two companies aim to also provide a wide range of further integration options with mobile wallet providers, app developers and automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), allowing them to develop additional benefits for using the mobile payment technology. Examples of such add-on services include offering rewards and loyalty programmes, cross-selling services and location-based advertisements aimed at enhancing the customer experience.

SAP - Fis

The technology is designed to be easily accessible for merchants and retailers, say FIS and SAP. The integrated solution provides direct payment processing to merchants, as well as supports standards of other payment processors. For retailers, the technology will not require hardware upgrades. On the back of both aspects, the partners expect that most merchants will have adopted the technology to allow customers to make contactless payments through cloud-based fuelling in North America by 2017.

Bruce Lowthers, EVP North American Retail Payments at FIS, says that the technology agreement with SAP is an important step in disrupting the payments process at gas stations. “Our FIS Mobile Payment Enablement Gateway will help facilitate mobile payments for retailers in multiple market segments such as gas stations, convenience stores, parking garages and restaurants, as well as emerging markets such as unattended kiosks.”