Visa rolls out ‘Tap to Phone’ service for contactless payment in Hong Kong taxis as it eyes slice of market
- Financial services giant says it has rolled out ‘Tap to Phone’ service for taxis, allowing passengers to pay their fares using their contactless cards
- So far about 100 drivers at Chung Shing Taxi have signed up for the scheme with more to follow in the coming months
Visa, which is in partnership with technology provider Global Payments Inc, on Tuesday said it had this month rolled out a “Tap to Phone” service for taxis, allowing passengers to use their contactless cards on cabbies’ Android smartphones to pay their fares.
So far about 100 drivers at Chung Shing Taxi have signed up for the scheme with a few hundred more to follow in the coming months but the firm said it aimed to woo the city’s 18,163 taxis with the cashless payment service. Industry leaders said more than 2,000 taxis had installed various e-payment apps.
“It’s our aim to make sure that all taxis eventually sign up … At the end of the day, following the Covid-19 pandemic, contactless payment is going to be the norm,” Maaike Steinebach, Visa’s general manager for Hong Kong and Macau, said in an interview.
“Contactless payment has been commonplace in Hong Kong. Expanding ‘Tap to Phone’ to the taxi industry, which is predominantly a cash business, helps to improve operational efficiency and provide a seamless customer journey.”
Steinebach said Visa aimed to provide an e-payment service for all public transport operators, particularly the taxi trade, which critics said had been reluctant to move with the times and fully embrace electronic payments as an alternative to cash.
“The taxi is one of the missing links in our urban transport strategy,” she said. “What we’ve noticed is over the last few years Hong Kong has moved very much from a cash society to a cashless or a contactless society. Part of it has been fuelled by the pandemic. Nobody wants to touch cash any more.”
