Photo by Chris Reif
MyTaxi, a company that makes a taxi-hailing smartphone application, has settled its beef with the D.C. Taxicab Commission over the new regulations governing credit card payments. The German company said in May that the new rules, which require all taxis to accept credit card payments—including those facilitated by digital services such as myTaxi—would have restricted its business.
Under the new regulatory regime, taxis must be outfitted with updated “smart meters” that can connect to credit card readers and smartphones or tablet computers that can process fares booked through companies like myTaxi, Hailo, and Uber. The digital dispatch services must also be approved by the DCTC, which includes collecting ride data.
MyTaxi rebelled when the new regulations came into effect, saying that upon the Aug. 31 deadline by which all 7,300 licensed cabs throughout D.C. must modernize their payment systems, it would have dropped its ability to process payments. But that now appears to be in the past.
The taxi commission gave its nod to myTaxi last week, the company announced in a press release today. Instead, myTaxi will proceed as normal, continuing to hail cabs and bill fares to its users credit cards.
“While questioning the regulations in the beginning myTaxi has forged a close working relationship with DCTC to ensure seamless integration of the new convenient payment options and policy improvements,” the company said.
As originally written, the new taxi regulations would have required cabs to pick a single payment system. But the commission later tweaked the regulations to permit taxis to transact with digital dispatch services that use their own—albeit still subject to regulatory approval—payment methods.
MyTaxi also announced something of a sweetener to its newly approved status. The company, which is marking a year since it entered the D.C. market, said it will give smartphones to 2,000 drivers who contract with it. While that’s a nice anniversary gift, it also relieves cabbies of the burden of having to go out and buy mobile devices of their own. As modern payment systems are slowly installed in D.C.’s taxi fleet, each driver is responsible for outfitting their vehicle with a smartphone or tablet device to take digital payments. Those devices aren’t always cheap.
