Ford Is Coming For Your Wallet

Ford has partnered with online financial services company Stripe, to handle payment processing for the automaker for things like vehicle reservations and the unfortunate future: subscriptions, Automotive News reports.

Ford says its dealers offering Stripe Connect as a payment platform will allow the company to "scale new services that require a robust, reliable e-commerce backbone." All this falls right in line with the company's Ford+ e-commerce plan of "recurring revenue streams."

You know what that means. Last year, Ford CEO Jim Farley described Ford+ in an earnings call during the company's Capital Markets Day:

Great products alone are not sufficient, though, to deliver Ford+," Farley said on the company's second-quarter earnings call. " 'Always-on' means we are regularly interacting with our customers on things large and small, and we're building new capabilities like connected services to enrich the customer experience and drive recurring revenue streams.

Read between the lines and you'll see this for exactly what it is and how all this comes together. Ford wants to make it easier for you to open your wallet to pay for subscriptions. Subscriptions aren't all the new payment partnership is for though. Ford thinks that customers will use Stripe to pay for things like vehicle orders and EV charging.

But make no mistake. Ford has tech company ambitions. And with more of its vehicles debuting with over the air capability (Ford expects 33 million vehicles to have OTA capability by '28), you'll be using Stripe to pay to unlock those heated seats in your Explorer in just a few years.