Automakers have spent the past decade polishing and promising visions of a software-defined future for vehicles and drivers. It’s one where cars become intelligent devices, services are activated with a tap, and digital ecosystems can generate the kinds of recurring revenue Silicon Valley would admire.
Yet for all the talk, the actual experience for most drivers today remains fragmented.
Inside a vehicle advertised as “connected,” most transactions still happen outside the car. Payments for tolls require one app, parking another, EV charging a third, and fueling continues to be a patchwork of local systems.
But Vera Mobility believes it can change that with its new platform, AutoKinex.
“AutoKinex is the first platform that really treats a vehicle as a fully verified payment actor across all these different environments,” Stacey Moser, Executive Vice President of Verra Mobility’s Commercial Services business, told PYMNTS. “Think about one network, one identity, one experience.”
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“We’re removing a lot of the fragmentation that makes mobility today super painful for consumers,” Moser added.
AutoKinex, for its part, aggregates disparate infrastructures behind one verified identity tied to the vehicle, not just the driver. This verified identity allows the car to transact automatically, securely, and in real time.
Verra Mobility’s first deployment of the platform, for toll payments specifically, will be rolled out in partnership with Stellantis across its Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram vehicles.
But the ultimate aim extends far beyond tolls. It’s a platform strategy, not a point-solution release, stressed Moser.
The Big Bet on Unified Mobility Commerce
The modern driver interacts with a labyrinth of disconnected systems, and these inefficiencies are more than just inconveniences. For automakers and mobility platforms, they represent billions in untapped revenue and unrealized customer loyalty.
What sets AutoKinex apart is the degree of heavy lifting occurring behind the scenes. Many startups attempt in-car payments by layering a digital wallet into the vehicle. Verra Mobility is doing something very different: building a compliant, orchestrated, multi-merchant network that can scale across segments historically resistant to standardization.
“We didn’t just want to build a wallet,” Moser emphasized. “We wanted to build a really strong and robust mobility commerce network.”
That ambition meant tackling enormous complexity. The U.S. tolling environment alone includes hundreds of agencies, each with its own rules, enforcement structures, and payment systems. Parking ecosystems are similarly balkanized. EV charging networks remain inconsistent, and fuel retail continues to lag technologically.
To make the system work inside a vehicle, AutoKinex has to handle identity verification, transaction authorization, payment reconciliation, compliance with regulated agencies, real-time data ingestion, and dispute resolution across all of these systems simultaneously.
According to Moser, “A lot of platforms can do a lot in one location or at small scale. But where technologies fall apart is trying to do that across many networks, across a nationwide infrastructure, and understanding the rules and policies across all of those.”
Why a Major Automaker Is Betting on In-Vehicle Payments
Stellantis is the first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to commercialize AutoKinex, and Verra Mobility worked with Stellantis through multiple live-vehicle pilots, analyzing driver behavior, transaction flows, and user expectations. Hundreds of cars were deployed to understand what a frictionless in-vehicle tolling experience should look like. The result shaped the commercial version of AutoKinex.
“Stellantis is really thinking about how do they bring a very different customer experience inside the vehicle,” Moser said. “The experience of buying a vehicle in the past has been centered around design or performance. But we believe that last frontier is really what’s that digital experience inside the vehicle.”
Just as important, Moser added that OEMs today increasingly want to “own that screen”—the digital real estate inside the vehicle. As manufacturers move away from third-party platforms like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, they are highly motivated to build unique, proprietary experiences that can also serve as revenue engines.
Payments, if done right, could be one of the most lucrative pillars of that ecosystem. But only if they actually work.
The Data Layer Driving Cars as “Computers on Wheels”
Perhaps the biggest unlock for AutoKinex is the explosion of data now available inside a modern vehicle. Most drivers have no idea how much software is running behind their dashboards, all the while telematics systems now capture everything from speed and location to battery health, sensor activity, and real-time diagnostics.
“Most vehicles today have between 100 to 300 million lines of code,” said Moser. “Cars these days are becoming more and more data centers on wheels or computers on wheels.”
Each vehicle has a unique digital identity, comprising the VIN and embedded telematics unit, and AutoKinex taps into that data layer, using it to authenticate transactions, verify the vehicle’s behavior, and enrich the payment experience.
And that’s just the beginning. Layer parking data, charging data, fuel network data, and reservation or availability data on top of this infrastructure, and the potential for a comprehensive mobility commerce engine quickly emerges.
“AutoKinex is the unified commerce experience,” Moster said. “Parking, tolling, charging, fueling—all of this becomes one seamless layer inside the car. And this becomes the mobility commerce network behind all vehicles globally.”
