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Philly Cabs May Stop Being So Touchy

Written by Evan Schuman
November 15th, 2006

The City of Brotherly Love may be among the first places to have taxis accepting contactless credit cards. The freeway-fond Philly financial falderol comes courtesy of a deal between the Philadelphia Parking Authority, MasterCard, VeriFone and Taxitronics and promises to equip some 1,600 cabs with “networked fleet management capabilities and consumer services including wireless credit and debit payment transactions, navigation, scheduling, trip logs, lost & found tracking, and panic button alerts,” according to a joint statement the group issued.

Because transactions worth less than $25 will require no signature, VeriFone said that it estimates the system will cut about 45 seconds off the transaction time in taxis when compared to cash and 15 seconds when compared to swiping a traditional payment card.

Posted in IT Strategy/Industry, Mobile/Wireless/Contactless, Payment Systems, RFID, Security/Fraud
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