James Tew predicts payments-driven searches are likely to be the biggest development for automotive portals in the next year

If you know that you can afford £250-300 per month, it makes sense for this to be the basis of your search. We very much live in a pay-monthly society and this is how many consumers think today when purchasing a car.

Until now, the use of payments search has been effectively limited to individual dealer or dealer group web sites. Soon, this picture will change when Quoteware becomes available on a major car portal for the first time.

This has presented some major technical challenges for the team here at iVendi but we believe that the results will potentially be extremely impressive. Indeed, we are confident that this is a major step forward.

This kind of search is very much in tune with the rapid and ongoing shift in the new and used car market to personal contract purchase (PCP) as the primary purchase tool.

If, in 2015, car buyers have a definite pay monthly mindset, then being able to present them with a tailored payments search into a database of cars running into hundreds of thousands should have definite appeal.

This, to our mind, is a game changer for car portals. Instead of a car buyer searching for a vehicle that they like, they will instead be identifying one that they believe they can afford. The distinction is subtle but crucial and moves the possibility of a sale much closer.

James Tew is chief executive officer at iVendi