If you jump into a Black Cab in London, you’re increasingly likely to be offered the option to pay with PayPal. You won’t even need a PayPal account, PayPal Here has been approved as a payment method by Transport for London (TfL). TfL’s has mandated that card payment facilities will be available in all London taxis, from October 2016
PayPal Here is PayPal’s NFC enabled credit and debit card reader and to kick-start card payments in Black Cabs, PayPal is running taxi advertising with Ubiquitous, the UK’s leading taxi advertising company. The taxi advertising activity is primarily aimed at London taxi drivers and alerts them to the availability of PayPal Here as a contactless and card payment solution for their taxi.
As part of the advertising activity, inside the taxis passengers will see the tip-seat posters during their journey, which communicate the choice and availability of being able to pay for their taxi journey with a debit or credit card payment, including contactless payment, via PayPal. This includes of course Apple Pay for those with an iPhone that are signed up for the service.
Rob Harper, Director of Mobile Commerce, PayPal UK said, “There are more than 22,500 Black Cabs in London, offering a first class service throughout the capital. However, more people expect to be able to pay by card when they grab a cab, and are frustrated to find that many taxis don’t take cards. We hope to remedy this by working with Ubiquitous to make PayPal Here the choice of both London’s cabbies and passengers in 2016, giving people the option to pay via debit or credit card and by contactless card and mobile payments”.
It might sound like a real innovation, but it’s not that cutting edge, my local taxi company has been accepting payments via PayPal for years, originally with the first PayPal Here card reader, but last year upgraded to the new NFC enabled version of PayPal Here. Whilst it might not be innovation, when you consider the number of taxi journeys taking place in the capital each year, the sheer volume of payments that could be processed by PayPal is staggering.
