Member Profile – Starfish

What does your company do? What services or products do you provide?  

Established in 2011, Starfish operates as a remote-first digital product engineering organization headquartered in Germany but service across the globe. We have an international team of about 70 extraordinary talents spanning over 18 countries across four continents.   

Starfish is a leading provider of a next-generation payment platform, serving global brands in payment operations, PCI DSS compliant, and has a strong footprint in the automotive, commercial vehicle, and transportation industries.

Key Offerings:

• Hellgate: Hellgate® is the comprehensive technology platform designed for sophisticated payment environments as a combination of Merchant Integration, programmable payment orchestration, and managed credit card data vault. It is designed to meet the needs of today’s fast-paced financial landscape.
• In-Car Payment Platform (ICPP): The world’s first native in-car payment solution for the automotive industry, offering a scalable solution for OEMs. ICPP simplifies and standardizes in-vehicle payments for essential services such as fueling, EV charging, parking, and tolling, creating a streamlined transaction experience for both consumers and manufacturers.

Services:

• Payment Orchestration and Multi-Acquiring: Optimizes transaction routing and payment processing efficiency across multiple acquirers.
• Network Tokenization and PCI-as-a-Service: Ensures secure and compliant handling of sensitive data, reducing the complexity of PCI compliance.
• In-Car Payment Platform: Provides a seamless, scalable payment experience directly from the vehicle, enhancing convenience and accessibility for users on the go.

Why did you join COVESA and how long has your company been a member?

Starfish joined COVESA because we believe collaborative innovation is crucial to shaping the future of connected vehicle systems. We are eager to contribute our expertise, knowing that COVESA’s leadership in setting global standards is key to driving progress. As a leader in payment technology, we recognize the pivotal role COVESA plays in uniting automakers, technology providers, and innovators around a shared vision of advancing connectivity, security, and interoperability. Since joining in 2023, we’ve found immense value in working with COVESA members on groundbreaking projects like in-vehicle payments, authentication, and authorization.

What benefits does your participation in COVESA bring to your company and business? 

Our involvement in COVESA brings multiple strategic advantages to Starfish, placing us at the leading edge of mobility technology:

• Early feedback for our innovations: Engage with technological advancements ahead of market release, allowing us to align our solutions with emerging trends and stay competitively differentiated.
• Dynamic Industry Collaboration: Connect with industry leaders, decision-makers, and partners, fostering collaborative efforts that drive business growth and inspire new ideas.
• Strengthened Market Leadership: Reinforce Starfish’s role as a key player in the evolving mobility ecosystem, enhancing our reputation and influence within the sector.
• Accelerated Product Development: Incorporate valuable insights and ideas from COVESA collaborations directly into our product development, ensuring our offerings remain relevant and future-ready.

Which COVESA collaborative project(s) or Birds of a Feather (BoF) is your company engaged in, and why is that beneficial to your business?

Starfish plays a proactive role in COVESA, co-leading both the Special Interest Group (SIG) and Birds of a Feather (BoF) initiatives dedicated to advancing in-vehicle payment solutions.

Key Benefits of Our Involvement:

• Establishing Industry Standards: Contributing to the creation of scalable, universally applicable standards for in-car payments, ensuring alignment with the needs of OEMs, service providers, and consumers.
• Drive Industry Consensus: By co-leading these groups, we facilitate industry-wide consensus, promoting solutions that are adaptable and that address the diverse demands across the automotive and mobility sectors.
• Strategic Partnerships and Innovation: Our engagement in these initiatives has led to powerful, strategic partnerships, both within and beyond COVESA. Through these collaborations, we’re pioneering forward-looking solutions that deal with the complex requirements of the connected and autonomous vehicle ecosystems, driving innovation through shared expertise and resources.

At Starfish, we are committed to pioneering innovation in the in-car payments space, transforming how payments are handled in vehicles. Our goal is to create an ecosystem where in-vehicle transactions are as seamless and secure as any other digital payment. Through our collaboration with COVESA, we aim to build an open, standardized, and scalable platform that meets the needs of OEMs, service providers, and end-users alike.