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Posted By

Aaron Mireles

PODCAST HOUSTON FINTECH STARTUP TAPS INTO NEW TECH TO MODERNIZE 'DAILY JOURNEYS'

Before Don Frieden started his company, gas stations hadn’t innovated their payment technology
since 1997. He knew that needed to change.

Original Post | Innovationmap

Before Don Frieden started his company, gas stations hadn't innovated their payment technology since 1997. He knew that needed to change.

P97, founded in 2012, exists to use innovative technologies to simplify and energize daily journeys, Frieden explains on the Houston Innovators Podcast.

The fast-growing company — which has nearly 200 employees, most of whom work from Houston — has raised over $100 million in venture funding, according to Crunchbase, most recently closing a $40 million series C round earlier this year. This funding has supported P97 as its expanded its technology, even expanding outside of gas station payments and into other sectors, like consumer packaged goods, mobile app development, and alternative fuel sources.

Part of what P97 is focused on too is adapting new technologies, including biometrics, and applying them to the payments world. Voice-enabled payments is something in particular that Frieden is working on.

"One of the things we’re most excited about is voice enable payments through our partnership with Amazon's Alexa," he explains. "The landscape of payments at gas stations underwent this next revolution, and we're using cutting-edge speech recognition and artificial intelligence to allow drivers to pay for fuel just using their voice.

"It makes the process faster and more efficient, and is completely hands-free," he continues, explaining that biometrics are also safer compared to card transactions. "From this time I say, 'Alexa, buy gas,' six seconds later, the gas would be turned on and any loyalty rewards I have would be applied, all from the comfort of my car."

Frieden shares more about the future of P97, payments, and the energy industry as it intersects with P97 — including the future of alternative fuels — on the podcast. Listen to the interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.

Gilbarco Veeder-Root, Xpedient LLC and P97 have partnered to enable the next advancement in Payment, Loyalty and Food Ordering from a mobile device.  P97’s PetroZone® solution for Mobile Payment and Digital Offers has been tested and certified with the Gilbarco Passport®Point of Sale.  This new, mobile commerce solution is based on the Conexxus Standard Interface, and mobile ordering has been integrated through an API provided by Gilbarco’s Food Service partner, Xpedient LLC.

By using this new solution, consumers can seamlessly order Made to Order food, purchase in-store items and fuel from a single app on their mobile phone.  The solution has awareness of the specific store’s menu and drives orders directly to the store with the flexibility to determine the actual time of arrival.

“This is just one way that Gilbarco and our partners are delivering substantial additional functionality to our customers during their EMV™ deployments, and it allows them an opportunity to get more out of their EMV equipment updates,” said Dan Witkemper, Passport Product Manager at Gilbarco.  “Enablement of this Mobile Commerce solution will begin with the current Passport versions supporting in-store EMV today.”

Gilbarco released their Passport v11.01 EMV software update for both the First Data and GlobalPay (formerly Heartland Payment Systems) networks in Q2 of 2016 and continue to lead the industry with the most number of US EMV certifications and total EMV transactions to date.

P97’s mobile commerce platform, PetroZone, was recently certified by Gilbarco’s Loyalty and Mobile Commerce site systems. This certification provides retail merchants and oil companies the opportunity to implement a standards-based solution that takes advantage of advances in the specification to provide merchants the best available technology for both mobile payments and loyalty.

Gilbarco will be showcasing the Passport Point of Sale system integrated with PetroZone, along with newest technologies and solutions at the upcoming NACS show, Booth #4331, at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, GA from October 19 – 21.

About Gilbarco Veeder-Root
Gilbarco Veeder-Root is the worldwide technology leader for retail and commercial fueling operations. They offer the broadest range of integrated solutions from the forecourt to the convenience store and head office. For almost 150 years, Gilbarco has earned the trust of its customers by providing long-term partnership, uncompromising support and proven reliability. Major product lines include: fuel dispenserspump mediapoint of sale systemspayment systems, tank gauges, software development and integration, fleet management systems, and nozzles.


About P97
P97 Networks architects and develops mobile commerce and digital marketing solutions for the retail fueling industry. By combining a cloud-based mobile commerce platform and a contextual commerce engine, P97’s PetroZone® delivers a powerful, integrated solution that empowers marketers, merchants and oil companies to attract and retain consumers. Agile and robust web services built on Microsoft’s Azure Cloud allow P97’s technology to enhance customers’ current mobile solutions, or provide a fully-integrated, 360-degree platform with a white-labeled, mobile application. P97’s mCommerce and modern point of sale solutions securely connect to millions of consumer mobile phones and connected cars to create unique mobile experiences.

About Xpedient
Xpedient LLC operates as a software company providing business solutions through self-serve kiosk applications. Its activities include software development, consulting, implementation, training and support services for the principal product Xpedient® Pro. The Xpedient software platform is a scalable, enterprise solution that allows businesses to create, manage and deploy a wide array of self-serve kiosk applications such as food ordering, retail, product locator, human resource, hotel check-in, medical, manufacturing and ticketing applications. The Company is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. Xpedient is an Advanced Solutions, Inc. company. For additional information about Xpedient, please visit www.XpedientSoftware.com.

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