Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to calculate payment information as more consumers turn to online channels to shop for and finance their vehicles.
It is expected that 30% of vehicle sales transactions by 2030 will be more than halfway completed online, Paulo da Silva, vice president of digital commerce at Cox Automotive, told Auto Finance News. “In just eight years, effectively, a third of all cars are going to be sold with a heavy online component.”
As online sales gain traction, “one of the biggest [ongoing] challenges with shopping automotive inventory is that you don’t necessarily have visibility to your payment information with lots of precision,” da Silva said, noting this is where AI plays a role.
AI uses data collected from a consumer’s name and phone number to run a soft credit pull to accurately estimate payments across all vehicle types without the need of the consumer’s social security number, da Silva said.
“We use a lot of our data and our artificial intelligence to effectively calculate, down to the penny, payment amount,” he added.
Washington state-based Titus-Will Automotive Group, for example, is using Cox Automotive-powered e-commerce website CarBreezy, to offer payment estimates for online shoppers. The dealer group has partnered with Cox Automotive for several years through its use of DealerTrack and VinSolutions, and adding the new platform was the next step, Ryan Butschli, the dealer group’s e-commerce team lead, told AFN.
AI allows financiers and retailers to better understand a consumer’s budget based on their credit score, address, and data related to tax, title and registration, da Silva said.
Consumer interest in online transactions “is really an inflection point,” da Silva said, noting that retailers are now asking themselves “how do we win in the marketplace of the future?”
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