New Apple iOS Feature ‘CarKey’ Applicable To Rental Cars
Apple has made a number of features available on its beta platform of iOS software that includes a CarKey feature. It allows iPhone users to gain access to a Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled car. Besides locking and unlocking a vehicle, CarKey can also start the thing up.
The feature was part of the first beta period for the new 13.4 iOS which is slated for release in March. It’s likely that consumers will have access to it when the new iPhone becomes commercially available. After all, Car Key was still included in the software when the second wave of beta rolled out.
“You will also be able to send a digital key to people using the messaging app,” read one piece about the product in Geeky Gadgets. The piece went on to make a bold prognosis. “This could be a useful feature for car rental companies and other companies.”
Interestingly enough, NFC amenities have been on the mind of software developers and product designers catering to the car rental industry for a while. In fact, Bluebird recently put out its own PaaK (Phone as a Key) mobile app back when Apple was still testing its own innovation.
More About PaaK
Unlike CarKey, PaaK is more versatile in that it’s also applicable to Android phones. It also works on passive (as in push-button start) automobiles as well as non-passive (otherwise known as key-start) vehicles.
Car rental firms can also customize the app to include the company logo and include an assortment of incentives to garner customer loyalty and provide on-demand rentals the very second a user logs in. With Paak totally integrated into a Bluebird RentWorks system, it also allows a company to include promotions, deals and other incentives to attract customers to specific models of a car rental fleet.
Additional Paak features include:
– Complete backend telematics system for accurate fleet monitoring and enhanced data security.
– Branded or private label mobile app to promote the company name.
- – Plug-in amenity done via the car access module for the sake of simplicity.
As technology is quickly helping companies stay competitive, Bluebird’s innovation has already benefited a number of company bottom lines. While Apple is notorious for being surreptitious over what’s in the latest iOS phones and usually very guarded over rollout dates, the Bluebird Paak app has no qualms over announcing its availability. In short, you can get it right now.
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