[custom_adv] Riding in a yellow taxi used to be a miserable experience, which helps explain why Uber and Lyft were able to swoop in and so thoroughly disrupt the industry. Fed up with unreliable and dirty taxi rides, passengers migrated en masse to ride-hail apps that promised cleaner rides, friendlier drivers, and seamless payments. Taxi operators tried to stave off the bleeding by rolling out their own apps — but most were just pale copies of Uber. Now, the traditional taxi industry is launching a new counter-offensive against the ride-hail menace: gadgets. [custom_adv] Starting this year and ramping up in 2017, Verifone Systems — one of the largest payment processing companies in the world — will install new technology in tens of thousands of cabs nationwide, in a massive effort to improve the cab-riding experience for not only riders, but drivers as well. Verifone owns taxi meters, credit card machines, and entertainment systems in dozens of markets in the US, including New York City, where it controls around half of the city’s fleet of yellow and green cabs. [custom_adv] The experience of riding in a yellow taxi is about to get high-tech. Gone are the bulky touchscreen TVs blaring clips from Good Morning America and the analog meters with their retro-red numerical displays. (Regulators in New York City announced last year its plan to phase out the annoying Taxi TVs.) By next year, many of TVs will be replaced with sleek, 10-inch touchscreen tablets with third-party app support. [custom_adv] There will be a USB charger, because we live in an era when our smartphones always need charging, and Wi-Fi, because data plans are expensive. Credit card readers will also accept mobile payment options like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. [custom_adv] And there will be new toys for the drivers, too. Verifone will be installing 7-inch tablets on the dash that will serve as an all-in-one meter, dispatch, and navigation device. It will use GPS to communicate with satellites to calculate the most accurate fare, but will also include back up software for those times the cab is out of range [custom_adv] Verifone is calling the new front-of-the-cab experience “Dash” and the back-of-the-cab gadgets “Ryde” — because everything needs a hip, weirdly spelled moniker these days. Dash is currently being tested in Verifone’s cabs in Chicago, Boston, and New Orleans, while Ryde is only being rolled out in New York City for now. [custom_adv] Verifone will be rolling out these new gadgets at the same time as competition for space inside most yellow cabs is heating up. Flywheel, an e-hail app based in San Francisco, recently launched its smartphone-based meter-and-dispatch solution in New York City. Flywheel hailed the achievement as the first time a new provider has been allowed to install its technology inside a New York City taxi in 12 years, while crowing about breaking up the “duopoly” of Verifone and its main competitor, Creative Mobile Technologies. [custom_adv] Moreover, yellow taxis across the country are still reeling from the disruption of Uber and Lyft. The value of medallions in New York City have fallen sharply, while fleet owners from coast-to-coast are filing Chapter 11. But Gross sees a silver lining amid all this app-inspired chaos.
