Biometrics Find Their Way in the Car Sharing Economy - P1

During the last few years, we have witnessed the car sharing ventures leave their incubation process and steadily expand across the globe. Although there have been many hurdles along the road, the emerging car sharing economy transitioned from being a questionable phenomenon that caused a great deal of antagonism to being hailed as a beneficially transformative, albeit disruptive, agent of change. According to a future-looking prediction, ABI Research estimates that by 2030 as many as 400 million people will rely on robotic car sharing, moving from the street rental phase, to ride sharing, and finally to the much-anticipated robotic car service.

Further, the use of biometrics for both passengers and drivers in this car sharing economy has been the focus of much debate and speculation in recent years. As per ABI Research’s predictions, biometric technologies show all the promising signs of establishing multiple IoT-tethering objectives within the next 10 years, with one being a higher penetration rate in the automotive sector, including car sharing.

Despite the phenomenal milestones achieved by companies such as Uber and Lyft, the concept of security for both passengers and drivers is always a hot spot and the source of a great deal of reproach by critics. During the last couple of years, however, the rapid development of biometric technologies along with their high penetration rate in consumer electronics (particularly face and fingerprint) converged to create a natural pairing and a much-needed security feature for such endeavors. ABI Research posits that this can be referred to as a “golden start”:

• The car sharing culture has been “seeded”
• Users have been educated by car sharing companies
• Multiple platforms have been trialed, tested and have succeeded
• Biometrics penetration rate on organic smartphone shipments can reach near 100% when allowing face recognition apps to make use of device camera
• Introduction of additional legislation regarding the use of biometrics (i.e. less of a gray area when it comes to law enforcement and standardization than it was a few years ago)
• Positive end-user attitudes and, of course
• The need for additional security measures

However, even after multiple biometric tests and pilots were launched by Uber and Lyft, most were either condemned by competitors or the firms were pressured by regional governments to comply with burdensome practices. More recently, this included the Maryland Public Service Commission and Road Island authorities, both of which asked the firms to register the fingerprints of its drivers. Not least, the ride-sharing companies have  clashed with the FBI over access on its next generation identification (NGI) system.

Unfortunately, these conflicts do set back the plans for certain biometric implementations, lowering the investors’ confidence, forcing companies to miss critical opportunities to find their way into the biometric payment market for ride-hailing companies. Should potential players choose to brave this storm, however, this could also be another opportunity which is currently up for grabs. By working as a biometrically-enabled payment and authentication intermediary, companies can find a foothold in the car sharing market by catering to both the end-users (passengers and drivers) as well as the respective car sharing companies. Practically, this can be realized as an additional platform which will bind a unique “blend” of application programming interfaces (PIs) that can include, among others, payment, authentication, location-based services, biometric processing and multifactor authentication (MFA). At least for now, the car-hailing companies themselves seem to play around, testing and launching new pilots in order to obtain desirable results with biometric technology while trying to avoid conflict with the authorities (or even just abandon entire states or countries if there’s significant pressure from the other side). The next insight will deal with two examples of companies which showcase a new perspective on the use of biometrics: Zipcar and Little.