Soon, private cabs will accept credit cards

Tired of rushing to the ATM to withdraw cash to pay the cab driver? If things go as planned, by this October you will be able to pay taxi fare by your credit or debit card. But this will be possible only for the private taxis and not the conventional black-and-yellow ones.

One such private taxi operator, Meru cabs, is working towards implementing it in this megalopolis. But this scheme will first be tried and tested in Bangalore before it is launched in Mumbai. “We do not want to test such a major scheme in Mumbai especially when the potential is so huge. Bangalore is a small city where we introduced our cab service. Hence it makes sense to test it,” said Gavin Dabreo, vice-president (marketing and sales), Meru cabs.

Another option on the anvil is to enable payment through mobile phone. Gold Cab has tied up with PayMate, a mobile payment service in India. “Since almost everyone has a mobile phone, one has easy access to internet banking,” said an official from Gold Cab.