About the Customer Journey and Experience

I’m familiar with Apple Pay/Google Pay. How does your digital wallet work?

In our current deployments, we’re partnered with OEMs on their existing or planned native wallet products, but we can integrate with any digital wallet. 

When we create a unique wallet, you’re likely to see us white-labeling it, since either our OEM or services partners would typically have a digital wallet program.

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Why would I replace Apple Pay/Google Pay via my phone?

Sheeva.AI is not really trying to compete with them. We enable you to pay from your car, so we see ourselves as complementary to them. The driver does not have to go take any extra actions at all.

As far as in-car payments, several automakers have expressed their reluctance to work with Apple and Google on this for a variety of reasons. We’re ultimately agnostic to whatever our automotive OEM partners want to negotiate; we can work with any payments rails they have while providing a faster and better customer experience.

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What makes you better than the contactless payment methods I know now, like QR codes and RFID or tapping/swiping cards at the point of sale?

We require one touch of the vehicle infotainment screen. You don’t have to bring out your phone or a credit card. It’s especially useful in bad weather conditions or safety conditions around you (e.g. dark parking lots). 

It also saves you from infrequently placed or poorly operating hardware: distant pay stations, broken payment systems on fuel pumps or EV chargers, or jammed parking meters.

You’ve logged into your wallet in your car; now think of how many times have you had trouble getting a receipt at a gas station pump or parking stations? We handle that for you, too.

No need to be concerned with credit card fraud or QR code fraud, either.

Our product suite makes things a few seconds faster, compared to swiping/tapping a credit card or paying cash, and it can also save you time from special lines when you need to pay that way, and staffing shortages now often mean no/few human attendants.

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How do I keep someone from using my digital wallet/profile?

It can be done several ways. You likely will have a profile set up in your own vehicle’s OS. But if you think of multi-user platforms you use now, like Netflix for example, we would be similar – using two-factor authentication (2FA), passcodes and down the road, biometrics. 

Otherwise the payment risk is like using a credit card.

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Why is down-to-the-pump location important?

It is the backbone of our product suite, and our patented location tech is what makes one-touch activation happen. It means you don't have to log in to your phone and you don’t have to do a several step process to make sure everything is activated. 

For gas stations, restaurants, EV charging networks, retailers and parking operators, our technology needs no extra infrastructure, camera or scanner. Our algorithm is loaded into the vehicle’s OS, and it takes data from the vehicle’s telematics system and combines it with GNSS data to site your car within a 2 meter by 2 meter spot. 

We geofence that and have mapped thousands of these service points already. Where Google and others have the gas station or parking garage geofenced, we have the precise spot geofenced down to the gas pump, EV charger or parking space.

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I’ve heard of other location tech that gets closer than 2 meters x 2 meters. Why is yours special?

For our product suite, we do not need to get down to the centimeter level. That makes our technology cheaper. Centimeter level is often needed today for autonomy, but it requires a costly ADAS system, adding thousands to the vehicle price. We offer a licensing fee to the OEM and then all that’s needed is for them to install our technology in their OS via the Telematic Control Unit (TCU), often as an over-the-air (OTA) update.

TCU data is always being sent to the OEM’s cloud. We can move that data into the Sheeva.AI cloud and combine it with GNSS data and create our experience.

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What about two gas pumps that are back-to-back?

We’ve mapped over 100,000 gas pumps and we are able to prompt a choice if needed. But this is where the 2mx2m space mapped to a pump is important.

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How about EV chargers that are back-to-back or have 2+ plugs?

It’s similar to back-to-back gas pumps, but EV charging is slightly different, as there are many configurations. When you pull up to an EV charging station, we have mapped the area. If there are 4 stations, we’ll have all 4 come up at once and you pick the right one from the car’s infotainment screen to activate.

While there are a lot of scenarios for EV charging, in an operating environment where 25%+ chargers may be down at any given time, it’s better to have an option for the overall charging space and let you pick the plug that’s working.

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Isn’t what you’re doing really what “Plug & Charge” (ISO 15118) is all about? How are you different? 

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The promise of “Plug & Charge” – the idea of plugging in and walking away while your EV charges – is exactly what we want to do. No extra apps to open and update, no payment methods to add.

But the current promise is not as simple as many would have you believe. Once the charging station is chosen, it does the “handshake” to pay. But you still have to activate it via an app on your phone. 

Sheeva.AI’s tech handles that, making us the only true “plug & charge” option out there.

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I have an app for this retailer/OEM/EV charger network/gas station already. Does Sheeva.AI replace that?

When it comes to managing payments in real-time, we replace that functionality, and we also work with loyalty programs.

You would be able to delete all your apps related to fueling/charging stations. You’re unlikely to delete your OEM app for other reasons, and that app may be how we help manage your profile. 

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Why not use the retailer app I have already? It lets me pick the store, then I can pay and get reward points.

We are able to integrate with your favorite loyalty programs via a simple API. 

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So it saves someone at a gas pump a few seconds. Does that really matter that much?

Yes.

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While the seconds saved may seem low in some cases, many of these are “grudge purchase” use cases, like fueling, where a few seconds is noticeable and has a big impact on customer experience.

And while you have their attention in activating inside the car, you can offer additional purchase opportunities or loyalty rewards in real-time.

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