Visa uses Bitcoin to improve car rental services

     When traveling abroad, you always have to do some research on car rental. But the experience may not be very good, such as queuing at the rental point at the airport or being snatched away by salesmen at nearby rental companies. For car rental companies, this way of working also consumes manpower and time costs.

Now, you only need to identify the car rental company in advance and then choose a car. Once you get in the car, you can sign the contract and buy insurance on the in-car screen, and the data can be updated in real time to the car rental company, insurance company and payment institution. It sounds convenient at first glance, but is it safe? Is the network provided by the local operator fast enough?

This is the latest attempt by credit card brand Visa and DocuSign, the electronic signature company in which it has invested.

It is not new to integrate Visa into the car system. At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in July this year, the company proposed a mobile payment solution for cars.

DocuSign, a startup, is an electronic signature company. Through their system, documents that require signature confirmation can be modified and reconfirmed just like sending an email, and backed up in the cloud. Signatures can be completed on the touch screen of a mobile device, and can also be stamped with a personal seal or official seal.

This signature system, together with the digital tags that will be customized for each car of the rental company in the future, together form a decentralized car rental transaction network. The technology used is the core of the Bitcoin transaction network: "blockchain".

You can think of it as a ledger that is publicly visible to everyone. There is no dedicated accounting agency. All users come together to record each transaction in real time. No one or company can control the overall situation. When the user base is large enough, after your transaction record is backed up 6 times on different nodes, the transaction is locked. It is impossible for others to embezzle it.

The transaction network is safe. However, the local network speed is not guaranteed. If you want to change the content of the contract, it will be faster to have a staff member by your side. Especially when you are in a hurry to go to the next destination.

In addition, this system can also help you automatically pay for parking fees and tolls. You can also use it to pay for online music and pizza orders. Ron Hirson, product manager for the project at DocuSign, also believes that "the car is becoming a payment tool, just like the Apple Watch."