(London, UK): Mercedes-Benz recently announced a new partnership with Mastercard to offer embedded in-car payments using a fingerprint sensor at petrol stations in Germany. The new service, made possible via Mercedes Pay+, will be available to use at 3,600 service stations across the country, eliminating the need to enter a PIN or authenticate with a mobile device.

Though this is a world first and has created a lot of buzz around the industry, usage is limited to less than one-fifth (17%) of the total amount of service stations across Germany. Mercedes says that fingerprint payments from the car will be extended soon to other vehicle-related services and to other European markets.

“Like with all new payment technology, for it to become widely used there needs to be integration on both sides of the issuing and acquiring network” says Simon Cottenham, Head of International Partnerships at Auriemma Group. “Before contactless terminals became widely available at retailers and on public transport, contactless cards acted no differently to traditional chip and pin only models, so how and when service stations and other vehicle-related services roll out the ability to accept this innovative way to pay will be key to its success.”

Mercedes and Mastercard’s strategic, limited rollout will help inform how consumers will utilise this type of technology in the future, and how willing they are to adopt.