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The car rental industry is standing at the edge of its most transformative decade. What was once a fragmented process, multiple systems, manual payment steps, unpredictable risk, and heavy counter dependency, is now accelerating toward seamless, automated, omnichannel mobility.
By 2030, 74% of rental revenue will flow through online or in-app channels.
Yet as of 2025, nearly 80% of airport customers still walk to the counter.
This gap represents the defining opportunity of the decade: the shift from legacy workflows to intelligent, agentic commerce powered by real-time payments, verifiable digital identity, and automation.
The operators that win will not be those who add another app or kiosk. They will be the ones who rebuild their mobility journey around a full-stack, token-driven payments infrastructure, one capable of unlocking new revenue, eliminating leakage, and enabling the fully contactless rentals customers now expect.
And this is precisely where Planet is leading the industry.
1. Payments are becoming the mobility control layer
Car rental payments have long been treated as an operational burden: costly, complex, and difficult to reconcile. But that model is rapidly breaking down.
As mobility becomes digital-first, payments are evolving into the new control layer that governs every step of the rental lifecycle:
- Booking - multi-currency pricing, Tokenization, and secure customer authentication
- Pick-up - instant pre-auths, one-tap deposits, and counter-optional check-in
- In-journey - remote extensions, incremental auths, usage-based pricing
- Return - automated inspection, documentation, and post-rental charges
- Post-rental - audits, dispute prevention, notifications, and settlement
This shift is not theoretical. It is already transforming operator performance.
Planet’s customer Rentway achieved an 82% reduction in uncollected charges, recovering €900K annually for a €40M operator by using Tokenization to process late charges weeks after the rental ended. And this is just one element of the broader impact: traditional operators lose €2.6 per €100 in uncollected revenue today, a number that cannot survive in a digital mobility ecosystem.
Payments are no longer a back-office function. They are infrastructure.
2. Tokenization is becoming the foundation of the mobility experience
Tokenization is quietly becoming the most transformative technology in car rental, not because customers see it, but precisely because they don’t.
Planet processes over 2 billion Tokenizations annually with enterprise-grade infrastructure. In practice, Tokenization enables:
Frictionless customer journeys
- Enter card details once - use across booking, pick-up, extension, and return
- App-driven extensions from anywhere (“extend by 200 miles without calling”)
- One-click repeat rentals
Operational efficiency
- Elimination of manual re-entry and lost authorisation codes
- Automated processing of extensions, upgrades, tolls, fines, and damages
- Recovery rates improving from 20–30% to nearly 100% for post-rental damage charging
Compliance and risk mitigation
- No card data stored in rental systems
- Dramatically lower PCI scope and breach risk
- Full audit trail for all post-rental charges
Tokenization is the invisible engine behind future mobility use cases, digital keys, counter-free rental, AI-led inspections, dynamic pricing, and fully automated returns.
3. From cost centre to profit centre: The €6–16m opportunity
For decades, payments were a cost to absorb. Today, they are becoming a strategic profit engine.
Planet’s Full Stack solution; gateway, acquiring, terminals, Tokenization, and currency conversion, unlocks €6–16M in annual profit improvement for large operators
Where this value comes from:
A. Currency revenue: €5–15M new income
- Multi-Currency Pricing (online)
- Dynamic Currency Conversion (counter & mobility devices)
- 60% merchant revenue share
- Supports 135+ currencies
- 90% of travellers prefer paying in home currency but only 20-25% do if it left up to PYC and that’s why MCP is so important
B. Revenue recovery
- 82% reduction in uncollected charges
- Smaller operators can expect to recover €174K while larger operators recovered up to €933K depending on volume
- Reconciliation time, with the right acquiring, cut more than 10 hours per week
C. Fraud and chargeback reduction
- Customer verified tokens used for payments such as post-rental charges
- AI-powered inspection for damage verification
D. Efficiency and automation
- No more multi-step manual processes
- No more double-entry
- No risk of lost or expired auths
Network tokens further strengthen this foundation by replacing raw card numbers with issuer-approved credentials that stay up to date, even when a customer’s physical card changes. This ensures far fewer declines caused by outdated details and delivers consistently higher authorisation rates across post-rental charges. When combined with Planet’s verified, customer-authenticated tokens, operators gain a far more reliable path to recovering tolls, fines, fuel, and damage costs; without friction, failures, or gaps in the payment journey.
4. Counter-optional mobility and the rise of agentic commerce
Customers increasingly expect mobility to behave like ride-hailing: Effortless, fast, invisible.
But car rental is more complex, multi-stage transactions, €1,000+ deposits, post-journey charges. This requires a more advanced model: agentic commerce.
Agentic commerce means the system orchestrates the mobility journey automatically:
- Authorise deposit at booking
- Trigger pre-auth on pick-up
- Adjust pricing in real-time
- Process damage charges with AI-generated documentation
- Release deposits automatically upon safe return
- Charge tolls and fines as they clear weeks later
Planet predicts that:
- Within 3 years: 40–50% of customers will have a counter-optional journey
- Within 5 years: 60–70% of the rental journey will be “minimal friction,” with humans only for exception handling
This transition is already underway. The missing link is infrastructure; specifically, universal Tokenization, and real-time payments logic across every channel (online, counter, kiosk, mobile, in-vehicle systems).
5. The next 3–5 years: AI, biometrics, interoperability, and autonomous payments
The next stage of mobility transformation is already visible:
AI-powered inspections
- Photos auto-scanned
- AI compares pre/post rental images
- Damage identified and cost calculated instantly
- Charge processed with supporting documentation drives recovery from 20–30% to near-total recapture
Digital keys
- App-based vehicle access
- Supports walk-out rentals
- Enables effortless airport and urban mobility
Biometric identity verification
- Face ID or fingerprint becomes the customer credential
- Retrieves token
- Activates digital key, no counters, no queues, no plastic cards
Interoperable mobility ecosystems
- Flights, hotels, rental, charging, return and parking
- One customer profile
- One payment identity
- One customer profile
- One token
Dynamic, usage-based pricing
- Real-time adjustment of extension costs
- Early return credits
- Demand-driven pricing
- Automatically charge fees for after-hours or late vehicle returns
Every one of these innovations relies on payment infrastructure, not just software, not just hardware, not just apps. Payments become the connective tissue of mobility.
Practical recommendations for rental leaders
1. Treat payments as strategic infrastructure, not a commodity.
Legacy acquiring and gateway setups cannot support future mobility. Full Stack orchestration is now a competitive differentiator.
2. Implement omnichannel Tokenization across every channel.
This is the foundation of counter-optional rentals, post-rental revenue, and automated risk management.
3. Monetise currency, online and in-person.
Most operators are leaving €5–15M on the table.
4. Build toward automated returns and AI-led inspections.
Start with documentation workflows and token-backed charges.
5. Prepare for interoperability with airlines, hotels, EV charging, and mobility platforms.
Mobility is converging. The customer expects one journey.
6. Reduce manual work and reconcile in real time.
Operators spending 10+ hours a week on reconciliation are already behind.
The future of mobility belongs to the operators who modernise their payments layer
Car rental is entering its most transformative decade. Customer expectations are shifting fast. Mobility ecosystems are forming. Automation is accelerating. And payments, once an afterthought, are now the infrastructure that determines whether operators can participate in the next wave of growth.
Planet’s Full Stack, token-driven payments platform gives rental operators the foundation to eliminate revenue leakage, unlock new income, automate operations, and deliver the flawless mobility experiences consumers already expect.
The future is arriving quickly. The question for every rental operator is no longer whether to modernise, but how fast they can move.
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