Five South Korean companies - KT Corp., E1, Lotte Card, BC Card and Smartro - have teamed up to form a consortium to build a connected car commerce platform that will allow drivers to use their car as a payment method at gas stations, take-out restaurants and other car-accessible locations.

On Wednesday, the five companies signed an agreement for cooperation in prototype development and future commercialization. The consortium will focus on creating a car payment service scenario, developing a pilot service technology, expanding the infrastructure for commercialization and performing joint marketing campaigns.

Energy company E1 plans to test a pilot service to its gas station customers and then expand it to other offline shops and online vendors. The automatic payment service will be based on KT’s differential GPS technology instead of separate location recognition devices at each merchant member.

KT plans to provide the payment service on established payment platform and infrastructure of its two subsidiaries BC Card and Smartro. Lotte Card aims to offer a DGPS-based automatic payment service, allowing drivers to order and receive their purchases at various shops nearby without getting off their car.

By Seo Dong-cheol and Minu Kim

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