AUTOMATED PAYMENT: MAN SimplePay lets the driver stay with their vehicle while refuelling and paying
Petrol retailer BP and truck and bus manufacturer MAN are teaming up to pilot in-vehicle contactless payments at fuel stations across the UK. MAN plans to follow the UK pilot of its new MAN SimplePay digital wallet for trucks with a rollout in Germany and then additional countries “later”.
For the UK pilot, MAN is initially launching a solution for automated contactless and secure payment processes when refuelling that lets the driver stay with the truck, “thus eliminating visits to the filling station shop and saving time as a result. This also reduces possible contact with other people in times of the coronavirus pandemic.”
“Fleet managers also benefit because they have a real-time overview on a dashboard and can control all costs and processes for each individual vehicle in a single system,” MAN adds.
“Another positive effect: their administrative workload is reduced. MAN is therefore tackling a serious problem that often takes fleet managers many hours and prevents them from performing their actual task, namely ensuring effective use of their trucks.
“From a technical point of view, the payment process takes place directly from the truck via the RIO Box in the vehicle. Digital processing of the payment process is carried out by another partner, the payment processor Stripe. The cloud infrastructure is provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It will be possible to book MAN SimplePay via the MAN Marketplace, and the service will then be installed over-the-air on the selected trucks.
“It is planned that the market launch of MAN SimplePay together with BP will take place as quickly as possible. And that’s not all: in the next steps, the partner network and services for simple and secure payment will be expanded further. For example, for services on the road — such as a payment guarantee to the workshop via RIO Box in the event of a breakdown.”
“The truck thus becomes a digital wallet — for all transactions that occur in everyday trucking,” MAN explains. “The benefits: complete transparency and simplification of all payment transactions.”
BP and MAN to pilot in-vehicle contactless payments for truck drivers was written by Sarah Clark and published by NFCW.