Mobile payments available in NYC taxis
This new form of transaction comes as a result of the use of the Way2ride app from VeriFone.
VeriFone, one of the two organizations through which New York City taxis process credit card transactions to pay for rider fares (the other being Creative Media Technologies), has just launched a mobile payments app that will allow passengers to use their smartphones instead of a plastic card.
The application is free and will be available for use on both Android and iOS based smartphones.
The VeriFone mobile payments app is called Way2ride. It is designed to allow smartphone users to use their smartphone instead of a credit card, after having registered their card data in their phone. This is unique from the other mobile commerce projects that are currently being tested by the taxis in New York City because the three e-hail apps in those pilot projects are for calling cabs and not paying for them.
This makes the Way2ride app completely unique in its mobile payments features for the city.
The implementation of the Way2ride mobile payments app and system in New York City is meant to be only the start of a worldwide rollout for VeriFone. It said that it intends to offer the service in all of its network of 70,000 enabled cabs around the globe.
Mobile payments and apps are becoming an increasingly important and mainstream part of taxi service. Just recently, new legislation was released in Washington D.C. that gave the district’s area taxi companies the chance to add smartphones to their lists of acceptable forms of transactions. This has lead to a number of partnerships in that area, in order to make it possible for cabbies to take advantage of this new law.
Among them, some of the most notable new mobile payments partnerships in D.C. were airsMobile and USA Cabs. They created the TaxiRadar app, which allows the customer to hail a cab and, through the use of a smart meter (which complies with the latest taxi commission regulations in the district), can complete the transaction and pay for their fare at the end of the ride, as well.
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Lucy
Lucy is a stay at home mom that loves to write. Mother of three, she keeps herself busy, between writing and playing taxi cab! She is originally from Los Angeles and keeps herself in the trend loop with many social networking groups she has formed. She attended UCLA and has found her home as a writer for now and in the future.
