Card Payment Facilities in Hackney Carriage Vehicles

Overview

The Licensing and Public Protection Committee of the City Council has given consideration to making it a requirement that all Birmingham Licensed hackney carriages be equipped to take credit and debit card payments.

At present drivers are free to offer additional payment methods, but Birmingham City Council has never mandated what those payment methods should be, or indeed made it compulsory for any additional payment method to be offered. Clearly a driver offering no alternative means of payment is potentially putting himself at a disadvantage when so many customers use chip and pin technology as a matter of course and increasingly also use electronic means of payment facilitated by the advances in smart phone technology.

On 3 February 2016 Transport for London (TfL) confirmed their Board had approved a proposal to require all of the capital’s 22,500 licensed taxis to be equipped to accept card payments.

The decision to require mandatory card payments was undertaken following a review of payment methods in September 2015 and an extensive consultation exercise. TfL received more than 1000 responses from a wide range of stakeholders, including taxi trade organisations, passenger safety groups, card industry representatives and the London Assembly Transport Committee. 86% of respondents were in favour of the proposal.

Chip and Pin is the most widely used alternative payment method available to public and business alike. If Birmingham is to follow the example of TfL, it may be sensible to adopt a similar requirement and require acceptance of card payments as the standard alternative payment method across the fleet of 1200+ licensed hackney carriage vehicles.

Why your views matter

The City Council is considering a request to make it a requirement that all Birmingham Licensed hackney carriages be equipped to take credit card payments.