Volkswagen Inks Deal To Buy PayByPhone

Volkswagen’s financing unit has inked a deal to buy PayByPhone, a Canadian mobile payments company, for an undisclosed sum.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the move on the part of Volkswagen is designed to bring mobility to vehicles. WSJ noted that PayByPhone processes $300 million in transactions each year. That transaction volume, however, is tiny compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars in sales Volkswagen generates each year, noted the paper.

The move on the part of Volkswagen to buy PayByPhone comes as the vehicle company is still reeling from a diesel emissions cheating scandal that happened late last year and hurt its reputation. At the same time that it is recovering from that scandal, it is investing money in initiatives that won’t show a profit for a few years, reported WSJ.

PayByPhone already has agreements with a lot of the parking operations around the world and handles the payments for 262,000 parking spaces in Paris, Boston, London, San Francisco and Seattle. In an interview with WSJ, PayByPhone Chief Executive Kush Parikh said: “There are more and more connected services going into the vehicle,” noting the purchase of the company could enable Volkswagen to offer drivers a better and easier way to buy things.

PayByPhone isn’t the only car company Volkswagen is investing in. This past May, it invested $300 million in ridesharing company Gett. That investment came as the company is attempting to grow its own ridesharing mark and get deeper into the on-demand market. On the U.S. side, there isn’t much publicly available about Gett’s financials, but one report showed the company was eyeing a funding round that would give it a $2 billion valuation. At least, for the most recent $300 million round, Volkswagen is the sole investor, which brings Gett’s total funding to $520 million.