If you thought that cashless buses might be beneficial for the
operator, but could cause problems for some customers, read about the
cashless/cardless taxi experiment:

Extracted from
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/p...ile-phone.html

As the cashless society gathers pace, Harry Wallop meets a cab driver
who only accepts 'Pingit'

But are the new methods of payment any more convenient than coins and
notes?

I became Mr Cable's fourth passenger in order to find out. It was a
mixed success.

He has adopted Barclays's Pingit, but most people with a British bank
account can pay for their cab fares by this new method, as long as
their bank is part of the Paym network. Paym is the mobile phone
payment system adopted by nine of the biggest banks, which launched in
April 2014.

The idea is that you can pay for your fare by sending a simple text to
the cab driver's phone, without needing to hand over bank account
details.

In order to use Pingit or any of the Paym systems, you first have to
download the relevant app on to your phone and then ensure your phone
number is linked to your bank account. For me, this was a cumbersome
process, with more than 10 different pages of details I needed to fill
in, many levels of security, and three separate verification codes
sent to my phone. And if you do not already have your bank account set
up on your phone it becomes even more complicated, as I found out.

In effect, you are setting up an entirely separate account, into which
you pay a lump sum. You then use that separate account to pay the taxi
driver, or window cleaner, or any of the tens of thousands of small
tradesmen and businesses to sign up with Pingit.

For small businesses, the advantages are clear. They do not need to
install a credit card machine. If they already take cards, they do not
need to pay the 10 per cent handling fees that card companies
invariably make merchants pay. They also do not have to handle cash.

Mr Cable says: "To me 23 years driving a taxi, there have been some
run-ins when I've felt vulnerable with having cash in my cab. Cashless
to me is an absolute positive, I also don't have passengers having to
stop at a bank."

However, while the advantages are clear to tradesmen, they are not so
black and white for consumers.

Once I had finally installed the app, paying Cable was very easy -- it
was a simple matter of scanning a QR code (quick read code -- very
similar to a bar code) on my phone, confirming the payment and
pressing send. The payment was confirmed within seconds.

But though the payment was probably as quick as getting a note out of
a wallet, handing it over and waiting for change, I am not convinced
that it is any more convenient.

....

Banks deny that they are slowly trying to phase out notes and coins,
in the same way they attempted to kill off cheques. However, two years
ago the Canadian government axed the 1 cent piece, arguing it costs
1.6 cents to produce each one cent coin. Many businesses complain that
their profits are hit by banks’ handling charges for cash. The average
cost of handling cash for a UK small business has reached more than
£17.8 billion a year, or £3,638.57 per retailer, according to research
by one of the mobile payment systems, Sage Pay.

According to the Payments Council, cash payments make up the majority
-- just -- of all transactions in the UK, accounting for 52 per cent.
This is down from 58 per cent in 2009.

Darren Foulds, director of Barclays mobile and Pingit at Barclays,
said that he did not think setting up the app was difficult, despite
my complaints. He said: "It is important for us that we have a secure
process for registering. We recognise there are a few steps to go
through, but it means you have the confidence that we are secure."

....

After one day of the experiment, Mr Cable has run into a Transport for
London roadblock. Despite the government agency banning cash on buses,
it has said Mr Cable cannot refuse to take a passenger if they pay by
cash. So, though he is going to encourage people to pay by Pingit, he
can not stop them taking out their wallets, rather than their phones.

For now, cash is king. And Pingit will have to wait a while longer
before it takes over.

In message , at 11:25:17 on
Wed, 16 Jul 2014, Recliner remarked:
The idea is that you can pay for your fare by sending a simple text to
the cab driver's phone, without needing to hand over bank account
details.

But not actually that "simple":

In order to use Pingit or any of the Paym systems, you first have to
download the relevant app on to your phone and then ensure your phone
number is linked to your bank account. For me, this was a cumbersome
process, with more than 10 different pages of details I needed to fill
in, many levels of security, and three separate verification codes
sent to my phone. And if you do not already have your bank account set
up on your phone it becomes even more complicated, as I found out.

In effect, you are setting up an entirely separate account, into which
you pay a lump sum. You then use that separate account to pay the taxi
driver, or window cleaner, or any of the tens of thousands of small
tradesmen and businesses to sign up with Pingit.

Not exactly a rave review.

I was thinking about this yesterday, when I suspected (wrongly as it
happens) that my PAYG phone had run out of credit and I had no means to
top it up. Life is becoming a trail of pre-pay balances that we leave in
our wake, and in the suppliers' bank accounts.

In other news, today I received a prepay (yes, another chunk of money
that's in limbo, needs to be topped up, and is a lot less universal a
medium than cash) Mastercard that *isn't* contactless. I had been
looking forward to trying it out on TfL. Whether there's a structural
reason why it isn't contactless (ie the possibility I could go overdrawn
without them knowing) or whether the issuer is simply a bit behind the
times, I don't know.
--
Roland Perry