The smart meter’s credit card payment keypad and TV screen, which will feature short loops of NBC content and weather.

D.C.’s taxicab fleet is still on track to be ready to accept credit card payments by September, Ron Linton, the chairman of the D.C. Taxicab Commission, said last Friday. Linton, appearing on WAMU’s The Politics Hour, said that installations of the new payment system are scheduled to begin June 1 on the city’s 7,300 cabs.

The devices used to process credit card payments, sometimes referred to as smart meters, have been long delayed in being deployed across the city’s taxi fleet. In an age when cabs in other major U.S. cities all take credit cards, D.C. taxis are still a cash-only business. A $35 million city contract with VeriFone was announced last year but thrown out in November after an appeals board ruled that it had been awarded improperly.

In the wake of that ruling, the D.C. Taxicab Commission said it would allow drivers to select from one of a group of credit card payments systems rather than be made to use a single model. On Friday, the commission announced that 10 companies have been pre-approved to install modern payment systems in cabs. VeriFone is one of them.

The commission is also scheduled to meet Wednesday and vote on whether to make permanent the regulations mandating installation of the smart meters. If the rule-making goes through and the new taximeters become law, the devices are expected to be fully installed throughout all of D.C.’s cabs by Aug. 31. With the new meters come a few changes in taxi fares, the base rate will increase from $3 to $3.25, and $1 fee for additional passengers will be re-introduced.